大象传媒

This contribution to WW2 People's War website was received by the Action Desk at 大象传媒 Radio Norfolk, with the permission and on behalf of Joan Whittingham and submitted to the website by the Wymondham Learning Centre.

I was born in Seahouses, Northumberland, on August 2nd 1925. My sister Mary was born in 1928 and brother John in 1932. Our father and his father had been lighthouse-keepers and our maternal grandfather a fisherman and later dealer in fish. Father had been apprenticed to a carpenter and after fighting in the First World War he left the lighthouses and returned to carpentry. In 1938 work in Seahouses was becoming scarce and father moved the family to Gorleston, Norfolk, near his parents home, and set up business as a builder.

In 1939 I completed my schooling and left in July, just before my fourteenth birthday. I started work as an apprentice hairdresser in Gorleston. I quite enjoyed practising the art of marcel waving on the hair wigs draped on dummy models. I had been there only a month when war was declared on September 3rd.

I remember that Sunday morning as clearly as if it were yesterday. Mother was making Sunday lunch, the wireless was on and we were all alerted to the voice of the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, declaring war.

We were worried that there may be bombing, so the first night we folded our clothes neatly with gas masks and a torch ready just in case. It was still a shock when we heard the air raid sirens sounding just after midnight. We got dressed quickly, someone grabbed the canary in its cage and we hurried to the nearest big communal shelter, about a mile away.

We children kept saying, 鈥淲e aren鈥檛 staying down here if this is what it will be like. We want to go back up north!鈥�

Fortunately the air raid warning that night was a false alarm, but father did take us back to Seahouses, where we rented a house overlooking the harbour. Father joined the Home Guard. I got a job earning 7/6 a week in the drapery department at the Cooperative Society . As the war progressed ships were occasionally torpedoed in the harbour and the lifeboat had to be launched to rescue the sailors. They came into the Co-op to be kitted out with clothes. Some of them were black, and it was interesting to see them choosing the brightest tartans they could find.

A lot of people collected coal that washed up on the beaches. Sometimes after a shipwreck one would find all sorts of interesting things, once even oranges, which were a luxury then. After a time the beaches were closed off with barbed wire and concrete blocks in case of invasion.

A lot of Scottish soldiers were billeted around the area. It was quite stirring to see them march through the village. They looked very smart with their kilts swinging. The Co-op staff would rush to get a grandstand view from the upper windows.

The troops were moved out and replaced every few moths. It made life interesting for the girls. My cousin Margaret Patterson was engaged twice but it never got very far as her mother disapproved of the boys.

Village dances, always ending with the Highland Fling, proved popular with the troops. My sister Mary, cousin Margaret and I were never short of partners. With petrol rationed, we had to walk home from dances. Sometimes we would walk two or three miles but it was great fun in a group, all of us laughing and singing. One night there was no dance band so Margaret鈥檚 father, my uncle George, deputised. He had a very large record player resembling a sideboard, and plenty of records. This proved so popular that he ended up going around all the village dances as M.C., which surprised us as he was a very quiet man.

Uncle George had a garage at Beadnell. Margaret drove the taxis and buses. During the war, instead of having to work in a munitions factory she drove a bakery van around the countryside delivering bread and groceries to outlying villages. I enjoyed going with her on my half-days. During summer aunt Nellie and uncle George let their house and lived in a little cottage behind the garage, overlooking the sand dunes and the sea. When I went there for weekends Margaret and I got up in the morning and ran down to the sea, coming back to aunt Nellie鈥檚 home-made bread and jam for breakfast. It was a lovely time of my life.

At the beginning of the war the government devised a scheme to share food out fairly, and rationing of essential foods was introduced on January 8th 1940, eighteen weeks after war was declared. Initially rationing applied only to bacon, butter and sugar.

Everyone had to register with a specific grocer and butcher and use them exclusively. Restricted food could be purchased only with a ration book, green for children under five, blue for older children and buff for adults. Most food was rationed by weight, but meat was rationed by cost. Although prices were fixed, quantities changed. The basic weekly provision per person in 1942 was as follows:

Butcher鈥檚 meat - 1/- ( = 5 p i.e. new pence) worth
Corned beef or pork - 2d ( = approximately 1p) worth. Children were entitled to half this amount.
Bacon - 4 oz.
Fats 鈥� 8 oz., of which 4 oz had to be margarine, 2 oz butter and 2 cooking fat.
Cheese 鈥� 3 oz. (12 oz for workers in special categories, such as members of the Women鈥檚 Land Army and miners. Vegetarians who did not use their meat and bacon ration also qualified for 12 oz).
Sugar 鈥� 8 oz.
Tea 鈥� 2 oz.
Eggs 鈥� (or the powdered equivalent) 3. Pregnant and nursing mothers, children, and invalids, got more.
Milk 鈥� 3 pints. Pregnant and nursing mothers and children up to the age of six had extra, and children from six to sixteen and invalids received more according to a set scale.

In addition, every four weeks each consumer was allowed 1Lb of jam, marmalade, syrup or treacle and was allocated 24 points to be spent on a range of foods including canned food, dried fruit, rice, breakfast cereal, dried pulses and condensed milk.

Pregnant and nursing mothers and children under the age of five were entitled to cod-liver oil or orange juice.

Although bread was not rationed, supplies sometimes ran out. Surprisingly, bread and potatoes were not rationed until after the war, in 1946 and 1947 respectively. Sweet rationing ended in 1953 and sugar rationing later the same year. Food rationing finally ended officially on July 3rd 1954 when butter and meat came off points.

Life wasn鈥檛 easy for housewives trying to give the family a varied diet. Obtaining a particular item often depended on being at the right place at the right time and joining endless queues. Almost anything could be bought on the black market and although the government warned that 鈥渂lack markets exist for black sheep鈥� and people ran the risk of being fined, there must have been some for whom rationing made little difference.

I remember my mother鈥檚 suet dumplings. She lined a huge basin with suet pastry and filled it with apples and sugar, or leftover jam or treacle if sugar was scarce. We loved those puddings, especially served with custard. Two helpings of that and you were set up for the day!

Soap was rationed to one tablet per person per month and the government asked us to take fewer and shallower baths - no deeper than five inches - and to share whenever possible!

Clothes rationing was introduced in 1941 and in 1942 the government set maximum prices. The Board of Trade permitted a limited number of styles, made only from specified cloth. Ladies鈥� stockings were available only in lisle or wool. A good scheme was devised to paint legs with potassium permanganate, which created a lovely tan. Then a black eyebrow pencil was used to draw a line down the back of the leg to give the impression of a seam. Not having to buy stockings saved clothing coupons. When the Americans arrived in Britain they brought nylon stockings with them. By then I was in the ATS, and our group were invited to their dances. We were given a great welcome, with gifts of chocolate and nylons.

Civilians were encouraged to 鈥渕ake do and mend.鈥� Nothing was wasted. One thing women did was make pegged mats. It was a social gathering, a group of women, working and talking together and catching up on the news. They would fix a canvas onto a frame the size of the mat they wanted. All the old clothes were saved and cut into short lengths about one inch wide by four long. Then the women would sit together with the frame on top of the table and using mat hooks, insert the rag lengths into the mat in different patterns. Sometimes the clippings were left long and the finished mat would be smooth. Short lengths produced shaggy mats, which I liked better.

Mother was very good at sewing. If sheets became thin in the middle she cut them in half and stitched the sides together to make them last a bit longer. Even her worn dresses were cut down to make aprons. Her aunt Madge owned the local fish shop and several nieces, including mother鈥檚 youngest sister Ida, worked there. Mother made all their dresses, charging 2/6 (15p) for them. I was annoyed at her charging so small an amount but she felt she couldn鈥檛 take more.

My school friend joined the ATS. She came home after training looking very smart in her uniform. Soon afterwards, on August 2nd 1943, I turned eighteen and was sent call-up papers to go and work at a munitions factory in Wolverhampton. This was far away and subject to constant bombing, and I didn鈥檛 fancy factory life, so I tried to enlist in the WAAF, but they wanted only cooks or technicians. I finally decided to join the ATS.

I was sent to Pontefract training base for six weeks. I enjoyed the experience and made many friends. Every morning we had kit parade where everything had to be laid out on our beds, bedding folded so that every blanket was the same, jacket buttons and shoes polished. We then had to stand to attention at the foot of the bed, not daring to move. After inspection we assembled on the parade ground and marched up and down until the Sergeant Major was satisfied with our performance. It was quite hard..

After training I was sent to Chilwell, Nottinghamshire. The camp was enormous, with three thousand army personnel and three thousand civilians. Military policemen were on duty at all the entrances and we had to salute every officer we met. We were billeted in the Queen Elizabeth Barracks, a large building on top of a hill. The dining room, catering for a thousand girls, was huge. The food was generally plain and rather stodgy. We had scrambled egg, which arrived on huge trays and was made from dried egg, for breakfast. It was not a pretty sight; but it was either that or porridge. We brought bread and cheese back from meals to toast for supper while sitting around the fire trying to keep warm. Mother sent me food parcels occasionally, which was a treat.

Fortunately there weren鈥檛 too many air raids. Life was busy but we had plenty of leisure pursuits at the camp. Telephones were a luxury in most homes at the time so I wrote lots of letters.

I was trained as a clerical officer. After passing my exams I was allocated to an office about a mile from the barracks. It being such a large camp, discipline required that we march to work in platoons. When it was dark the last person at the rear carried a lantern. Eventually I was promoted to Lance Corporal and was in charge of the platoon as well as joining the guard duty rota at the barracks.

After a few months I was posted to Crawley in Sussex. It was a welcome change, a much quieter camp in the countryside, where we were billeted in Nissen huts on the golf course, ten girls to a hut. On our free days we explored the surrounding towns. We once went to Reigate by bus and saw some airmen walking about with badly scarred faces. Apparently there was a hospital there specialising in the treatment of burns. It was very sad to see the state these poor young boys were in. Most of them had been shot down in flames while on active duty. Despite expert treatment some remained horribly scarred for life.

When I arrived at Crawley in 1943 a new bypass two miles long had just been built. It had not yet been opened, and tanks and Bren gun carriers were lined up along it. My first job was to check them to make sure they were all kitted out properly. A small group of men and women formed our team. One of the soldiers drove the truck that transported us along the bypass where all the tanks were. If we had time when our work was done the men would let us girls have a go at driving the truck over the fields. That was good fun, as none of us had ever driven before.

After a while I was promoted to Corporal and given a job in the stock records office. I had to produce a weekly stock record audit of the tanks for the officer in charge. That was
where I met Syd Cartwright. Syd was the officer鈥檚 driver, so he was in the office quite a lot, waiting around for him. We started going out together.

We were about three miles from Crawley village. There was no bus service, so a duty driver on a three-ton lorry would take us in. There were no street-lights because of the blackout, and one night there was a horrible fog, so thick that the men had to walk in front of the truck to guide the drivers, but we didn鈥檛 let it stop us. We had to make sure we didn鈥檛 miss the last truck back or we鈥檇 be on a charge. One evening I was late getting back to camp 鈥� I can鈥檛 now recall why 鈥� and was confined to barracks for a week. That didn鈥檛 stop me and Syd meeting, though. If he was duty driver and had any free time he came to my billet so that we could see each other.

One night we were woken by a strange spluttering sound like a peculiar plane going over. We all lay shaking in our beds wondering what it could be. A few seconds later there was an enormous bang. Next day the news was that Hitler was using a new type of bomb. It was the V1 missile, which looked like a torpedo with wings. The V1 needed no pilot and was launched from France on a route set by the Germans. We got used to them flying over after that, and lay in our beds listening to them on their way to London and praying that they wouldn鈥檛 land on us. Just before they fell to earth, causing enormous damage, the motor would stop. It was quite frightening.

We could sense that pressure was building up and that something important was about to happen. The hundreds of tanks standing in line along the bypass were all kitted out and ready for any conflict. There were rumours that troops were massing on the south coast. On the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, we went to work as usual but the place felt deserted. There were no tanks to be seen. It was quite eerie and silent. The news on the wireless was that troops had landed in France.

My work at Crawley was virtually finished and it wasn鈥檛 long before I was posted to Dorking in Surrey. I was billeted in a large house there so it felt like being in a family home and more personal than at a large army camp. After a few months I was sent to Gateshead Team Valley Trading Estate in Newcastle, Northumberland. It was a good posting. There wasn鈥檛 quite so much bombing there, and once again I was in a large house with about twenty girls. We could walk to work, so no marching in platoons. I was pleased to be there as it meant I could go to Beadnell on my days off to visit aunt Nellie and uncle George, and cousin Margaret and I could go out together. Margaret was still driving, delivering provisions to outlying areas.

The troops were making good progress abroad. Syd had been posted to Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire, attached to the 6th Airborne Parachute Regiment as a driver. Shortly afterwards he went with regiment to Arnhem, where he drove lorries bringing supplies up to the troops. He travelled as far as the Rhine following the parachute regiment in a convoy of supply lorries. After the mission to capture Berlin was completed he was sent back to Great Missenden and eventually posted overseas to Rawalpindi, India. Before he left England he was granted embarkation leave. I applied for and was granted a week鈥檚 compassionate leave to be with him before he left. I travelled to Huddersfield to stay with him and his family. It was the first time I had met them. Before he left we became engaged.

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