大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Amy Bennett-Newens, a volunteer from CSV Action Desk on behalf of Peter Pigden and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Pigden fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was born in October 1939 at the commencement of World War II. Unfortunately this has resulted in my recollections of the war being dulled by both time and my then youth.

I remember my mother Kate Pigden being in endless discussion with neighbours about food and where it could be obtained. I trailed endlessly behind her on shopping expeditions as she walked clutching her ration book to locate the best of whatever was on offer.

The 'Black Market' thrived and my mother did have some occasional access to bananas. A luxury which I did not then appreciate!
This leads to perhaps my most persistent memory. In these frugal times of food rationing my mother insisted that everything that was put on the table had to be eaten, and I was forbidden to leave until it was. I once stubbornly refused to eat some boiled cabbage and sat there all day. I eventually was sent to bed and the following morning the cold cabbage was still there. I ate it for breakfast. To this day, over 60 years later I still cannot leave food on the table and I love cabbage. This amuses my children and my grandchildren immensely, who still refer to me at the dinner table as 'War Baby'.

The house was heated from a single open fire. In the winter coal was scarce and my mother would walk the two and third miles to the Wharf Lane gas works in Solihull pushing her bicycle. There we would queue to buy a bag of coke, which we would rest on the seat of the bike and push it home.

I remember a stick of bombs falling in a line across Sheldon and houses were bombed either side of our house. The blast blew in the kitchen windows and a piece of shrapnel gouged two holes in the kitchen wall.

My most vivid memory is of one evening when fighter planes were over the house. My mother had pushed me under the arch created by the chimney breast and stood in front of me. I was clutching my mother's legs buried in the folds of her frock, but trying to peer round her across the room and through the window and Tracer bullets shots across the window and I ran from behind her to see more clearly. My mother caught my collar and hauled me back and in a single blow hit me harder than at any other time in the whole of my childhood.

The following day I found a large bullet in the basket on my mother's bicycle and a hole in the bike shed roof. It was my most treasured possession and much admired by my school friends.

Later we had what I think was a Morrison Shelter, a sort of metal cage under the dining table. This was designed to protect us from falling masonry in the event of a bomb striking the house. Always before the siren sounded warning of an attack, my mongrel dog 'Mick' would get up and go and lie in the shelter. Later my mother was to tell me that he could distinguish German Bombers from British ones and only sought shelter when it was the enemy.

We kept chickens in the garden and my job was to dig the chicken run to enable them to scratch for worms. The chicken shed was made of old orange boxes all of different sizes and thickness all nailed together in no discernable pattern or architecture. It was my job to collect the eggs.

We also had day old chicks in a cardboard box in the dining room. They were kept warm by an electric light bulb under an earthenware plant pot. As they grew they replenished any poor laying chickens which were eaten. my grandmother and grandfather killed and plucked the birds. The feathers made great Indian headdresses as I played 'Cowboys and Indians' and pulling the hamstring of the lower chicken legs made the claws of the feet contract.
My pet rabbit unfortunately fell foul of some of the poachers who stole him for the pot.
At the end of the road were the local farmers pig bins for any scraps of food. It was my job to take these up to the bins. Except for potato peelings and carrot tops the pigs got little from our household.
Despite all this they were happy times for me. I took disproportionate enjoyment collecting the silver paper dropped by German bombers to confuse the radar, and bombed houses provided places to climb and hide in. They also created the opportunities to collect broken plaster for chalk to draw on pavements and walls.

Best of all was the return of my father from the war. He was George Edward Pigden, known by all as 'Piggy' and served in the Royal Engineers seeing action in France, Egypt and Palestine. He was at Dunkirk and at D-Day landings.

He had been away fighting for most of my early years and I remember he seemed huge, strong and played endlessly with me. I remember him hugging my mother with me at their feet between them. My mother had her hand on my head.

He brought home a toy steam train engine he had built. It was big enough for me to sit in. It consisted of a piece of telegraph pole to make the boiler. This was sitting on a plank of wood with four wooden wheels and a wooden cabin at the back. It was the most wonderful present.

He also had what I think was a Lee Enfield rifle. He left it in the box room upstairs. I crept up and tried to lift it but it was too heavy. However, by putting the rifle on the windowsill I was able to lift the butt and pull the trigger. To my great disappointment it was not loaded, which was lucky for the window and the neighbours. My father never knew.

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