´óÏó´«Ã½

MEMORIES OF A WARTIME CHILDHOOD (part two)
The author of this story understand the rules and regulations of this site and had agreed that her story can be entered on the Peoples’ War web site

In the 1940s the river Hogsmill had a lot more water flowing in it and a special summer treat was to have a picnic on its banks and paddle. A small beach had formed near the railway bridge where the river came through from Ewell village. We also did a lot of fishing for tiddlers using a home-made fishing net. In those days flour came in cloth bags which, when well washed, made an ideal net, and a loop of wire fixed to a stick completed it.
We mostly played in the road outside our house as we had to be close to home and there was no problem with traffic. We were not always popular with one neighbour who had no children, as we could be noisy. Hopscotch and skipping with a long rope held by two people and marbles were favourites, and the girls played "mothers and fathers" with their dolls. On rainy days we swapped beads or used milk bottle tops to make woolly balls. Milk bottle tops were circular cardboard about 2 inches across and had a small central push-out hole. Odd scraps of wool were wound round and round the ring until the hole was full, the edges cut, all tied tightly, cardboard removed and a fluffy ball had been formed. Boys played "Flick" cards: this was flicking a cigarette card (given away in cigarette packets) or a milk bottle top against a wall, and if you covered your opponent's card it was yours. If you wanted your opponent to throw the first card you said "Lardee". Goodness knows where that expression came from!
A favourite game indoors was "sliding", and we spent hours with our two friends doing this. Our hall only had a small mat and the rest was shiny lino, so we would put on an old pair of woolly socks and run and slide along the lino. My friend's house was better as they had a longer hall. We were given a pre-war boxed game of Monopoly and as we got older we learned how to play and would extend the game for two or three days - each time we got a bit short of money we would hand out another few thousand pounds.
One collecting game that could only be done in war time was collecting pieces of shrapnel found around streets and gardens. I suppose it came from gun ammunition or exploding bombs - we didn't think much about its source. Anyway the larger the piece the better it was for swapping; in time it turned rusty. We also collected what we called "Glitter". This was shiny strips of paper whose correct technical name I believe was "Window", and was dropped by enemy planes to confuse the radar screens on the ground.
Once or twice we went to stay with relations in Andover, Hampshire, for a short holiday. There were a lot of Canadian troops stationed in the area and our favourite dangerous game was to stand on the side of the road and shout "Got any gum chum?", and they would throw a handful of chewing gum out of the lorry. Luckily no one was ever injured while scrambling for it.
Christmas and birthday presents were fairly simple, although one year I had a beautiful china doll passed on to me from an older cousin and my grandmother knitted her a full set of clothes. My brother was given Meccano, again from older cousins. It dated from the early 1930s and was a bit rusty. Mostly presents were home-made: my uncle made charming little brooches from small fir cones or the even smaller cones from the alder tree, and knitted hats and gloves were made from oddments of wool. Dad made quite a few wooden pull-along toys from odd pieces of wood and the wheels were slices of dowelling. Quite often grown-ups were given a quarter of a pound of tea if my mother could spare it - much appreciated by heavy tea drinkers who found the ration too small. Another rationed item, soap, was popular as a present. A hand-made face flannel, its edges stitched with blanket stitch in coloured thread, was wrapped around the bar of soap like a headscarf and a face painted on the bar of soap. An oval-shaped bar was best. We always left soap in a warm place to harden it; this made it last longer.
Before the flying bombs started I was in the junior school and one lesson was gardening. Each group had a plot in the school grounds and we were encouraged to grow vegetables, having read, discussed, measured and planned our work indoors, thus incorporating maths, reading, etc. Unfortunately when the flying bombs started we missed a lot of school, and later when we returned someone had stolen all our crops. At this time a lot of people were again evacuated, our classes became small and widely mixed ages, and we all moved into the infants' school building, as the Ruxley Lane junior building was used to house workmen brought into the area to help with bomb damage. For some reason one or two of us had to go back to our old classroom to collect something and the room was full of bunk beds. I remember seeing Italian prisoners of war (POWs) in Epsom High Street repairing the road. I don't know where they were housed. By then the Italians were not our enemy, but we were inclined to look upon them as such.
Children being children, we had our own chants: Whistle while you work
Hitler is a twerp Goebbels' barmy So's the army Whistle while you work.
At that time and age we didn't realise it was Hitler and Nazism that we were fighting. Within ten years of the war ending I was married, my husband was in the army and we were based in Germany where we made several German friends, one of whom we are still in contact with 50 years later. You then become aware that ordinary people are caught up in things that they have no control over.
We had many moments of laughter over the years, but the one that still makes me laugh took place in Ewell village. I was about nine and my grandmother and I were passing the blue police box (similar to the Tardis of Dr. Who) which had a siren above it. As we passed, the siren started to sound which had to be loud to be heard at a great distance. My grandmother nearly jumped out of her skin and disappeared round the brick protection wall and into the police box. When I followed her in, there was a policeman with one hand on the siren button and the other holding a stop watch and my grandmother clinging round his neck. He was saying "All right lady, all right." Poor man!
Ask any child who lived in Ewell around that time and later, do they remember THE PIPES, and most will have memories. These were in the fields at the end of Manor Drive close to the rear entrance to Ewell Court park. I believe they were large gas pipes abandoned at the beginning of the war, six or seven of them about three feet in diameter and twenty feet long. This was our adventure playground. Some were stationary and one rocked and one could be rolled. Oh, the number of pinched fingers and bruised knees that we suffered either by jumping from one to the other or sitting inside while others pushed the pipe - all great fun. They were coated in black pitch so that on hot summer days it was possible to carve your name in it as it softened up. Health and safety rules were not known at that time!
As the war drew to a close I was old enough to be as excited as everyone else to see the newspapers showing the advance of the Allied troops across Europe, and the day after peace in Europe was declared we had a wonderful impromptu street parry. Fighting went on for several more months in the Far East, but sadly we didn't give this much thought as it was all so far away. One last memory is that I thought all the news programmes on the radio would stop because what news would there be once the war finished?
We didn't realise that food rationing would continue for many years and that there would be great coal shortages, especially in the bitter winter of 1947. Our mothers continued with "make do and mend", converting old dresses to fit us - the blackout curtains were cut up and made into skirts with the addition of coloured binding for school dancing classes - and my father continued to repair our shoes.
We were lucky, we survived, and in spite of disrupted schooling many of us went on to Grammar schools. We were eventually able to visit the seaside which was a great novelty, although home-knitted bathing costumes were a great embarrassment, as once in the water they stretched down to
our knees.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.