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This story was submitted to the People's War site by the Dunstable At War Team on behalf of the author and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was eleven years old when war broke out; my father was a resident engineer at Whipsnade Zoo and as a result we lived in the park grounds with my parents, my mother’s mother, my father’s brother’s wife and her nine month old baby. I was sitting on some steps playing marbles with some friends when a very important gentlemen came up to us, most people would have just told us to get out of the way but his gentleman asked us to move very politely. When he came out we were told that war had been declared and we went home to get our gas masks — contained in a little cardboard boxes held with string. The first thing to happen was that the policeman was sent round on his bicycle informing everyone that the park would be closing. As we had nothing to do we were offered riding lessons on the Shetland pony!

Two elephants were sent to Whipsnade while a new elephant house was being built in London Zoo. They were soon joined by another three evacuee elephants from London together with the senior elephant keeper and his wife, who were housed in a cottage in the village. Three giant pandas arrived at Whipsnade during the summer and kept in a pen where the new chimp island has now been built. They chewed on bamboo, which was grown especially for them in Cornwall. Four chimps and two orangatangs were sent down with the senior chimp keeper and his family who were housed in a cottage in the car park. Wives and children of the Zoological Society were also evacuated and housed in old army huts in the village.

With all the evacuees in the village, the superintendent’s wife formed a guide company. We were taught Morse code and were so good that we won the district award for it. Of course guiding meant service so we collected rubbish and filled sandbags. I was sent to look after toddlers in a nursery behind the Catholic Church but I didn’t relate to small children very well and spent my time chatting up the catholic priests. I didn’t know at that time they had to be celibate and I wouldn’t get anywhere!

The guides belonged to the Dunstable Association of Youth Organisations and held swimming galas at the California pool in Dunstable. I was lucky enough to be the swimming champion. My little highlight of the war at the California happened when a man was in difficulty, his wife was shouting and I plunged in, grabbed hold of him and pulled him out. When he thanked me for rescuing him, to my astonishment he was dressed in a sailors uniform!

We went on parades in Dunstable with the army and air cadets. We had war ship week and wings for victory week and would stage plays and concerts in Whipsnade village hall to raise money. We also had a national savings competition. We did so well that they put a flag pole up in the village grounds and let us take turns to hoist the flag. I wasn’t very long before most of the wives and children evacuated went back to London but there were still enough children for us to have parties and a social life, which was totally non existent before the war.

The government regulations stated that a certain amount of grassland should be se aside for growing food. The park had always made its own hay but now the old farmland (because the zoo had been a farm before it was a zoo), found parts of itself, back to its old use. Potatoes and root crops were used to supply the restaurant and used as animal feed, the grass made hay, domestic animals were breed on the farm, pigs and sheep were sold to the ministry of food while some pigs were sold to the Herts and Beds bacon factory at Hitchin.

During the time of rationing, if local people could afford it, they would come to Whipsnade for Sunday lunch for the price of 3 shillings and 6 pence. It meant they could save their coupons and I remember one of the people who came was Phyllis Calvert, the actress. She had a house in Kensworth and would walk with her husband and children to have their lunch at Whipsnade.

Our meat ration as a family was supplemented by rabbits; there were colonies of them on The Downs. The overseer used to go out on a regular basis, so we had rabbit at least once a week, roast rabbit or rabbit pie, which was absolutely gorgeous. My father kept bees, chickens and ducks and not only for the eggs but for the hens as well. We also grew runner beans and tomatoes. I have never tasted tomatoes like the ones he used to fertilise with elephant poo! Tomato sandwiches were absolutely delicious! My mother always mixed the two rations of butter and margarine together and it wasn’t until I was at college that I realised what butter tasted like on its own!

We used to go out into the fields and gather in the grain; put it into sheaves (there were about seven sheaves in a stook) and splay the legs out so that the rain would run off them. We worked late into the night and ended up with very scratched arms. The dry stalks were cut off and used as animal straw while the grain was taken to the works yard, thresher. My job was to fill the oat sacks; I never thought that I would encounter a rat or a mouse; otherwise I probably wouldn’t have done it. They were then taken down to Eaton Bray with me standing on the back of the lorry for a ride!

In January 1940, a black rhino and an African elephant both died as a result of a very severe winter. The ground was so hard they couldn’t dig to bury them so they were burnt in one of those flint pits that used to run along the front of the Downs; it took a week for the carcases to burn. Food was very scarce and during the first Christmas of the war a polar bear had a cub and its father ate it. A litter of tiger cubs and a giant panda all had fits and Boxer the two year old giraffe, became ill. Visitors to Whipsnade were encouraged to bring food for the animals. They were asked to bring lettuce, cabbages and carrots for the herbivores, buns for the bears and sugar and buns for the elephants — I always had acorns in my pockets, they loved those. The one animal that didn’t need feeding was the wooden horse; it stood on the top of the Downs. It was going to be broken up but a group of admirers saved it and brought it to Whipsnade in 1937 where it stayed until 1947.

Whipsnade was an air- raid warning post; warnings were phoned to the estate office (which was also the headquarters of the home guard and the civil defence), and passed to Kensworth and Studham. There was a hooter on top of the water tower, which always sounded at five o’clock so that wherever the works department were, they knew it was time to knock off and go home. That now became the air-raid siren and every time it sounded the wolves howled in unison!

About 41 bombs fell on Whipsnade between August and September 1940. My friend and I were cycling down Incinerator lane, which runs from Whipsnade to Studham, so called because it was where the incinerator was located for all the zoo’s rubbish. We then heard this terrific bang, looked up and saw this silver plane and a puff of smoke - we thought we were being bombed. We flung ourselves into the hedge. The bombs that did land in the park didn’t do much damage; mostly they made craters that eventually turned into ponds. The only fatalities were the Spur Winged Goose, the parks oldest inhabitant and a baby giraffe that panicked and ran itself into exhaustion.

In 1945 I remember falling off the snow plough and was caught by an Italian POW. We had 2 Italian POWs helping out at Whipsnade. We had a bonfire on the common when the war finished on the 8th May. I finished the war with an absolute flourish, because on VJ night I tipped Gerald Durrel headfirst into a cow pat, not knowing how famous he was going to become.

The war was a very exciting time for me; the only really serious parts were the shortages of food for the animals; animals that had to be burned at the beginning of the war and seeing the bombing of London.

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