大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War Site by a volunteer from CSV actiondesk on behalf of Mrs Vi Williams and has been added to the site with her permission. Mrs Vi Williams fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

During the war I lived in Buckinghamshire. The first part of it I was at school and later at work. We had a lot of evacuees from London in our village, some never returned to London as they married a local person, others hated the village life and only stayed a few weeks. We also had Italian Prisoners of War from a camp 6 miles away. They came to work on the nearby farms. They made lovely baskets from willow including shopping baskets. Some of the locals even invited them for Sunday tea.

When I left school I worked in a grocery provision store as a cashier. Eventually as the men went to war I had to turn my hand to everything in the store. I cut the cheese up into the ration portions, boned the bacon and as I cycled everywhere I collected the grocery orders on my way to work.

During the rationing people shared things, I can remember we had no bananas, there was dried egg powder, we put prunes in cake and made marmalade from an orange jelly with grated carrot in it.

I can remember all the railings being taken down from around buildings and monuments, so that the metal could be used. Also there was 鈥淒ig for Victory鈥�, all the lawns were dug up to provide vegetables.

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