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In 1939 I was 13 years old and living with my parents in Burford Avenue, Swindon. With the continuing aggression of Hitler’s Nazi Germany, and in spite of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s efforts in 1938 to keep the peace, it had become increasingly evident over the past twelve months that war was looming on the horizon.

An ”Air Raid Precautions” (ARP) programme was put in place throughout the country with volunteer Air Raid Wardens being trained in dealing with the various threats to the civilian population, should war commence. One of the worst feared threats was the use of poison gas, and gas masks were issued to everyone. I well remember our local Air Raid Wardens, Mr and Mrs Barrett who lived only a few doors from us, coming to the house with a variety of sizes to ensure a gas-tight fit for each of us. The test was to place a square-shaped piece of cardboard over the air intake, to check that the cardboard square stayed in position when the wearer breathed in. Smaller children were given “Mickeymouse” respirators, coloured red, in an effort, I presume, to make it seem like some kind of game. Small babies were slid into a device that enclosed their whole body apart from their protruding legs, and a clear plastic panel allowed them to see their mother who would pump in a filtered air supply by means of a small bellows, while nursing the infant.

You will have read in the previous chapter that search lights and barrage balloons were already in place around London and other cities in 1938, which were considered to be major targets. Swindon was not protected by these methods until much later, after the war had started
The “breathing space” of promised peace had been used to accelerate aircraft production and the build-up of other armaments in readiness for war. On the outskirts of Swindon Phillips and Powys and Miles Aircraft were already building training aircraft for the RAF, later to be joined by Vickers Armstrong and Short Brothers who built the Spitfire fighter planes and Stirling bombers.

Britain had agreed to defend Poland, if attacked, although there was nothing it could give in the way of immediate military aid. On 1st September 1939 Germany attacked Poland, and two days later Britain declared war on Germany. At noon on 3rd September families all over Britain gathered around their radios as Neville Chamberlain announced that Britain was at war,
I remember on that bright sunny Sunday morning we, as a family, congregated in the dining room to await Chamberlain’s announcement, that as the German troops had not withdrawn from Poland by the allotted time, “I have to tell you now that we are at war with Germany”.
My immediate thoughts were of what I had heard and read about the horrors of the 1914/18 war with Germany. The millions who had been killed and maimed, the use of gas as a weapon, and the number of years it had lasted. I was only thirteen, but Geoff was sixteen and I quickly calculated that if the war lasted as long as its predecessor, Geoff would be called up into the fighting forces. I loved my brother dearly and the thought of him becoming a casualty secretly filled me with fear of what the war might bring to us as a family. A selfish thought, but I’m sure many households in the land shared the same thoughts about those nearest and dearest to them.

The first physical change to be experienced was the blackout. All windows had to be covered at night by light proof material or screens which could be fitted into the interior of the window frames. All the street lamps were extinguished, as were the shop window displays. Lights on all forms of transport, including even bicycles, had to be shielded to give the minimum illumination.

Next came the arrival of the evacuees from London by the train-load, all identified with a label tied to their clothing, and each with the now familiar rectangular cardboard box slung round their shoulder containing their gas mask. Regular gas mask exercises and air raid shelter drills were carried out in the schools, including mine.
Some evacuees were brought to our road and allocated to any family who had a vacant bedroom. All of our bedrooms were occupied so we were exempt, but our immediate neighbours Mr and Mrs Moody found themselves with Violet, an inappropriate name for a little redheaded girl from London’s Eat End. She couldn’t understand why, on her first evening she wasn’t taken down the road to buy some chips while her guardians spent the evening in the pub. When asked where she ate her chips, she told them she sat on the pavement outside “with other kids”. Violet stayed with her Swindon foster parents almost throughout the duration of the war and became a very nice young lady. She visited them on a few occasions too, after the war was over.

Rationing of food was introduced in January 1940, with sugar, butter and bacon first on the list, but almost everything else including coal, petrol and clothing quickly followed. With the fall of France and the evacuation of Dunkirk, which commenced on 26th May 1940, everything became in short supply or unobtainable. There was no fresh fruit being imported or any luxuries of any kind, only essential war materials which survived the U-boat blockade which sank hundreds of thousands of tons of Allied shipping.
At my school each class devoted one afternoon a week to “Dig for Victory” in support of a National campaign to produce homegrown food. We were marched from Sanford Street to Upham Road where we dug and planted all kinds of vegetables on a waste piece of ground, now occupied by the Upham Road Centre.

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