大象传媒

I was 11 and my sister was 8 when the war started and we lived in Portsmouth with our parents. I remember the day the war started, I was shelling peas for lunch on Sunday morning and everything was very quiet in the house then we heard the announcement. I still feel cold when I think about it. I can remember just stopping and wondering what it was about. We had no idea what it was going to be like; we had no recent pictures from TV. We had pictures of WW1 but not of actual wars like we see today. Yes, we were at war we were at war with Germany, we knew there could be air raids because we鈥檇 all been given gas masks but we weren鈥檛 really aware of what war was going to mean to us. We were surprised when people came round and collected all the railings and asked people for spare saucepans so they could be turned into weaponry. Although Portsmouth was a very vulnerable area to start with we didn鈥檛 have any shelters.

We were not evacuated either, my sister and I, my father said if we are going to die we would all die together as a family and we didn鈥檛 argue. I imagine children today might have something to say about that! But we accepted it I remember going to the station to see all the other children going off in the trains with their gas masks, children crying, mothers crying. I suppose my father thought at least you are being spared this. I remember the first night of the war, the air raid sirens went off and we went under the stairs because my father decided it was the safest place to be. Nothing happened that night but we were under the stairs for about 2 hours! It was quite a squash Mother and Father and the 2 of us under the stairs.

Opposite our house there was a school which was immediately turned into a first aid centre with a barrage balloon put up in the playground and there were about 12 lorries lining the streets that were to be ambulances. They were all fitted out ready for the first air raids. These ambulances or lorries started their engines every hour night and day to make sure they were ready for action and the noise was absolutely terrific.

Later on we exceedingly lucky because we moved from Portsmouth the following May to Bournemouth which was supposed to be a reception area. I hadn鈥檛 been to school at all from the day war broke out until were moved because all the schools in Portsmouth were closed. I then joined the Bournemouth School for Girls at The Lansdowne. Because it was a reception area Southampton Grammar school had been evacuated to Bournemouth. They had our building mornings one week and we would have it afternoons and vice versa the next week. Morning school started about 8.30 till 1.00 and afternoon school was about 1.30 to 5.00. On the half days when we were not at school we had to go to various places like church halls in Bournemouth for various activities like first aid, choir or violin practise. There was no transport provided; we had to find a bus and get there ourselves. Fares were very cheap; it was a half penny fare to get from Winton in Bournemouth where I lived to The Lansdowne where I was at school.

Bournemouth was a reception area so there were no shelters in the town at all but despite this it did get bombed. The planes would drop the remains of their load on the way back from Portsmouth and Southampton. We would hear them going over every evening. There was an urgh, urgh, urgh of the planes when they first flew over and we knew when they were coming back because that noise had gone, they had dropped their load and were lighter so didn鈥檛 need the same power. However we had an enormous square, solid dining room table with a mattress underneath it and a mattress on top of it so when the sirens went to warn us of an air raid my sister and I went under and my parents went on top. When the bombs started dropping my parents joined us underneath. That was our protection against what was happening. Fortunately it was never tested!

We were in Bournemouth at the time of the evacuation from Dunkirk. All the schools were closed. There were lots of soldiers, many of them French, walking the streets without shoes and with sodden wet uniforms from standing in the sea waiting to be rescued from the beaches. I remember people going out of their front doors and handing over piles of clothing to these men 鈥� socks, shoes, shirts, coats anything to give them something to wear to be able to get out of the sodden, salt encrusted clothing. The French soldiers were put into the schools then there were announcements on the radio asking people to take them into their homes, feed them and look after them for a few days. The soldiers were each given a ticket with the name of the school that they were billeted in so that they could be returned to the school by the family. My father brought home one of these French soldiers, he was from the SW of France. He was with us for about 4 days. I鈥檇 done less than one year French at school but I sat in the garden under the apple tree with this lad and a French dictionary and between us we had a conversation! We heard from him, he wrote to us, for several years after the war.

I didn鈥檛 know then but one of those soldiers walking the streets of Bournemouth became my husband years later. He鈥檇 been waiting 5 days on the beaches at Dunkirk. His memories of Dunkirk were very real to me because I鈥檇 seen it from the other side.

We eventually left Bournemouth because my father was ill and we moved right down to Cornwall. We lived in St Ives where we thought we were absolutely safe until one afternoon when a stray Italian plane came in, went right up the main hill out of St Ives, machine gunning and dropped a bomb on the gas works. At the time we were renting an old fisherman鈥檚 cottage with 4 rooms one on top of the other. I happened to be on the top floor when this happened so had a good view of what was going on. Once the panic was over and the gas had been switched off from upstairs I could see that outside the shop opposite there was a queue. I asked my mother 鈥淲hat in the world are they queuing for?鈥� They were queuing for Andrews Liver Salts because somebody had told them that it was good for nerves! all those people were waiting for Andrews Liver Salts! Of course after that we had no gas and everything had to be cooked in the local bakery. On a Sunday mornings we would see all the women with whatever meat they had been able to get on ration and their potatoes waiting to put their dinners in the baker鈥檚 oven. As soon as he had finished baking bread, while the ovens were still hot, all those dinners went in the oven and produced a lovely smell and around about 1 0鈥檆lock everybody went and collected it!

I continued my education at Penzance Grammar School very peacefully. I remember the end of the war always have walking along the prom, smooth sea and on the horizon a little yatch with a red sail I would be 17 and though of the song 鈥楻ed sails in the sunset鈥�. Whenever I see a boat with a red sail I always think about the end of the war. We鈥檇 heard the news on the radio, apart from the cinema where you got very brief pictures and news reels we only had the radio. People would follow the war with maps on the walls, that were the only way to know what was happening where. Totally dependent on newspapers but these were censored of course. Often saw telegram boys arriving to give the news that some one was dead.
D day I was at school doing French and my teacher, Miss Crosby, her fianc茅e was in the landing troops and our French lessons consisted of listening to the radio, trying to get bits of French radio to try and find what was happening and were the troops were because her fianc茅e was there.

In the evenings when we lived in St. Ives my mother and I made camouflage nets for the guns. We would go down to a little factory and collect great bails of string and long wooden needles and wound the string onto a thing like a shuttle. We started with one square that we would fasten to something like a door handle and continue by increasing each row by 2 squares until it reached 97 squares wide, then decrease each row by 2 to get down to 1 again. It was a complicated job and tough on our hands because it was rough string like very strong garden twine and we had to pull it tight. We also used to make string vests as well for all the soldiers and sailors but particularly for those in the desert, out of thick white cotton string on big, big needles it was very boring. Lots of people made balaclava helmets, knitted socks and mittens we supplied the wool ourselves out of our coupons which was a great sacrifice. We had to take care of things and be resourceful, common to unravel woollen jumpers for example, and use the wool again to knit something else.

Rationing went on long after the end of the war well into the 1950鈥檚. The meat ration was 1s 2d worth of meat. If you were lucky you could get a rabbit or sometimes you could get liver, neither were counted in with your meat ration. Even when I went to college, after the war had finished there was rationing, we had 1lb of jam or marmalade for a month, about half a pond of sugar a month. we had coupons to get bread, about 2 loaves a week but if there were more people in family you got more rations. bread was not made with white flour, flour wasn鈥檛 treated in the same way as it is today and came out a greyish brownish colour but we got used to that. Sweets were rationed as well, we had a few sweets a month. Fruit was non existent, especially oranges and bananas we couldn鈥檛 get them at all. We could get apples because they are grown in this country. Tea and coffee was rationed but very few people drank coffee in those days. I don鈥檛 remember having coffee at home very much. Everything that came from overseas was rationed. Clothing was also rationed. If you bought a new coat that was your clothing ration for several months. I remember seeing a coat for 拢5 in the window of Beales in Bournemouth. It was belted and made out of blue Harris Tweed, I was able to have that and felt very grown up. That was my clothing ration for ages and ages.
Stocking were difficult to get so women used to brown their legs with tea and draw a pencil line up the back to make it look like the seam of the stockings. Nylons were not available until the Americans brought them over with them. Of course tights had not even been invented! Towards the end of the war the silk material from damaged parachutes was advertised in the daily papers. You paid so much a panel and it was sold in strips. We used to make things like underskirts and blouses with the material.

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