大象传媒

Mrs Winifred Pepper (formerly Lund, nee Reece) talking to a UCN Community Volunteer (Jackie Holmes) in Kettering, Northamptonshire.

I remember that my husband used to bike home from air bases that were close to home; luckily for us he managed to stay in the country during the war. He was a bomb disposal expert as part of the Royal Air Force (Brylcream boys!), towards the end of the war. During the war he would come home at the weekends with his kit bag full of goodies! For example tins of fruit or meat or sweeties for the kiddies. He would take a risk when he left the base, but it was worth it and lots of people were doing the same.

When he volunteered for the RAF, unfortunately I had to go into hospital for an operation, which kept me there for three months. My children had to go to my mothers and my husband was only granted leave once. The recovery was only supposed to take three weeks.

My sister was in the WRAFs another sister was in the land army, and I had two young children.

I remember the fences being taken down for the iron, which was used for the war effort. They also collected old saucepans and any other metal waste for recycling.

We had an evacuee to stay with us during the phoney war, at a time when the country panicked.

We went to the air-raid shelters about four times all together, but after a while people did not bother, as our area was quite safe compared to others. It was seen as a waste of time, but at the time the talk was of imminent invasion. Local buildings for example anti-natal clinics were closed to prepare for the many casuleties that were expected, but they never did, (this had a knock on effect on me as I was due to give birth).

I received financial help from the 鈥淪oldiers, Sailors and Airmen Association鈥� (SSAA) which even provided me with a pushchair for my baby that was born as the war broke out. They gave me hand knitted gloves and jumpers that had been donated from Canada. They also helped me to get extra money each week, we did not know where to go for this help prior to this and just struggled on. I was even given money to buy shoes for the two boys.

When my husband left the forces and returned to the shoe trade we were worse off financially than we were during the war as I had an extra mouth to feed and no more extra benifits.

I remember pushing my pram with two kiddies in and being wolfwhistled by an American or Canadian Airmen.

The war did have a profound effect on family life as all the men were taken away. When they came home on leave we would go out and run from pub to pub as they ran out ofbeer!! We snatched happiness when we could, as we were not together on many occasions. My brother was killed in Burma during active service; this instance brought home the tragedy of the loss of life.

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