大象传媒

Transcription of a group session held at Medway Archives and Local Studies Centre, 23 Feb 2005. Part One

Present

Norma Crowe 鈥� Local Studies Librarian, Medway Archives and Local Studies Centre

ET 鈥� lived in Gillingham since 1932. She was 17 when war broke out and in 1940-1942 drove an ambulance at Richmond Road depot during the Blitz.

JP 鈥� came to Medway in 1957. War years spent elsewhere. She trained as a nurse starting in 1939 at St George鈥檚 Hospital then at Hyde Park Corner. Finished training 1943 joined the army, got ready for D Day went over to Normandy where they were in tents moving up through Belgium and ending up in Antwerp.

VT 鈥� lives in Rochester. Moved to Medway 20 years ago. All her memories are of London. She was 24 when war broke out and she did Civil Defence work all the way through. She joined the Women鈥檚 National Fire Service in 1940. Stayed there until her first daughter was born in 1943.

BA 鈥� born in 1937 so he was two when the war broke out and he lived in Gillingham at School Avenue

RA 鈥� was 18 when the war started. He worked at Shorts (aircraft factory) until 1943 when he joined the forces and went to Normandy, then France, Belgium, Holland over the Rhine up to Hamburg and when the war finished went to Berlin. He was attached to the Desert Rats and was in Berlin until 1946. They disbanded after the war, be-mobbed in 1947.

Rationing

JP 鈥� hospital rations, food very uninteresting. After night duty we would feel very hungry and we would go to a Kardomah caf茅 in Knightsbridge and have coffee and cakes and that was one of the highlights of being on night duty.

VT 鈥� we did go short of food, when I joined the fire service, we had 2 days one duty and two days off, so when we were on duty we were fed so we were quite well off regards eating. We did not have to use our rations on those two days. But we were all underfed and when I became pregnant in 1943 we were all undernourished and we were taken away to the country to be fattened up for a week before the baby was born. Even then my baby was only 5lb in weight. You didn鈥檛 get any coupons for babies. We just had to struggle on getting things for the baby such as nappies. We were allowed enough coupons for about half a dozen nappies which wasn鈥檛 enough. The mother and baby home was at Paddock Wood. I had to register with Woolwich when I became pregnant because I was in the National Fire Service. I didn鈥檛 get any time off at all with them. In fact they made us stay until we were 6 months pregnant and we had to do all our normal duties. You had to do your day duties, night duties and go for your ante tests in your own time. A week before your due date, they told you when you were going to have your baby, no messing about, they took you by car from where you were (I was at Bexley Heath at the time) to Paddock Wood to Moatlands. Its now a country club with a golf course, it was then a lovely country house. We were well fed for one week and then they induced your baby, you had it on the day whether you wanted it or not. Then you stayed another week, fed up a bit more and then sent home.

NC That was an interesting insight into how bureaucracy took over people鈥檚 lives. There was no choice - you had to do what you were told.

VT: Girls today wouldn鈥檛 stand for it. You couldn鈥檛 do anything else 鈥� you couldn鈥檛 strike, you couldn鈥檛 refuse because there were no other amenities. It was like a fortnight鈥檚 holiday because we were fed.

ET: I was at Richmond Road Ambulance Depot and the council had set up what they called British restaurants, which were canteens all over the town. One week my husband and I attended the one at Arden Street. It was always very basic food, steamed potatoes in their jackets, lots of vegetables, whale meat and some said horse! I don鈥檛 know how true that was. It was filling though not very exiting. Lots of big steamed plum duffs with hardly any currants in. After my son was born in 1942, I seem to remember, food was very rationed and we were reduced to cooking things like pea shucks and potato peelings, making quite tasty meals out of them. We used to get meat pies on coupons from the Medway Pie Shop in Gillingham High Street. Basically it was like a sheet of cardboard with a big mound of potato in and a bit of meaty gravy on top, no meat anywhere near it.
But we managed and survived. Things gradually got better. Sweets were unheard of. I remember queuing up. We were at the depot and someone said they had tomatoes at a shop in the High Street and we queued up all of us for about two hours and got four tomatoes each.

NC: I wonder whether any of you remember the Dig for Victory campaign?

ET: My husband dug up our lawn and planted potatoes and cabbages.

RA: We had a couple of chickens and rabbits. We only had one egg a week, then one a month. As the war went on things got even shorter, as ships were sunk. We had dried egg and dried milk.

VT: We were lucky to get that 鈥� dried egg was a luxury.

ET: A lot of it came from America together with other foods. Dried egg was quite good really, especially for cooking. Bread wasn鈥檛 white - white bread disappeared completely.

NC: I had a letter the other day from my uncle who was born in 1938 and for no reason at all he was sending me a couple of memories. He still makes himself dried egg omelette. It is like leather, but it reminds him very much of when he was a child during the war and it was something that his mother used to cook for him as a treat!

ET: Of course you queued for everything didn鈥檛 you in those days. You went shopping and you always had to queue up in Gillingham High Street.

VT: In fact you joined a queue before you knew what it was for.

ET: Because you knew they something!

RA: There was nothing in packages. You would go to a shop and they would wrap two ounces of butter. I can remember they used to make a paper cone and put a little bit of sugar in.

ET: There used to be some black market where you could buy things cheaper but my uncle Jack Shepherd was Food Officer of Gillingham and he said that because people were frightened of him they always got everything exactly dead on the amount. I remember saving my husband my eggs when he was coming home on leave from the Air Force, and he said he had egg and bacon every morning for breakfast because he was air crew.

VT/RA: But they deserved it. That was right.

JP: The forces were better fed than the rest of the general population and I noticed that when I went from a civilian hospital into the Army. And even better than the British Forces, were the Americans.

ET: Well they had everything didn鈥檛 they. They were well fed, well dressed and popular with the girls!

VT: Overpaid, over-sexed and over here, they used to say!

RA: When I first went into the forces, I went to Blackpool, St Anne鈥檚. I remember a man there, well a lad like myself. We got off the train and went in and the first thing you did, you had to take an attach茅 case with you, so they took your clothes and stuff it away in the case and put your name on it and they put it on the train and send it home. Then you were given your uniform so you had no civilian things at all. I remember going in for that first meal 鈥� I will never forget it in my life. I was used to living in the country. My dad grew his own vegetables so we weren鈥檛 too badly off for those. I was sat next next to a chap and there was a long table and they said 鈥淪it down there you鈥檙e in the Army now!鈥� They came along with a trolley with all the plates on and they threw them right along the tables. There was cabbage, huge leaves on the plate, not very clean and I didn鈥檛 want to eat it and this chap asked me what the matter was. I said 鈥淭his cabbage is terrible鈥�. He said 鈥淥h you鈥檒l soon get used to it when you鈥檝e been here as long as I have鈥�. I said, 鈥淗ow long have you been here then?鈥� and he replied 鈥淭hree days!鈥�.

ET: My mother kept chickens so that we could have fresh eggs and one cockerel. And he was getting near the end of his life and we decided Christmas Day we were going to have the cockerel and we would kill it. In the end some neighbor came in and killed it for us because there weren鈥檛 any young men around, being all away on service. Non of the women wanted to do it. This cockerel was killed and non of us wanted to eat it, we had watched him for few years, we had just lost the family pet.

BA: I often wonder how my mother managed because when war break out my father died and she had seven to bring up. Everything was on ration but I always remember we never went hungry. For some reason, I don鈥檛 think bread was rationed. There was a baker up in Barnsole Road called Larkins and we would get double loaves of bread. We had bread puddings, custard bread. Sausage and potato pie was another dish.

ET: Sausages were all bread though, they never saw any meat though! We were used to it, no body suffered through it really. We are all in our 80s and 90鈥檚 now so it couldn鈥檛 have done us any harm!

VT: My daughter is a 62 year-old pensioner. For all the shortages we weren鈥檛 too badly off.

RA: What we did have didn鈥檛 do us a lot of harm.

BA: All the sweet things like sugar etc were on ration so you were limited in what you could eat.

NC: So you probably were healthier than people today.

ET: We used to try and make sweets with treacle and things with not a lot of success. They were always sticky or rock hard.

RA: There was a sweet ration, but they were few and far between.

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