大象传媒

This is the transcript of a taped Reminiscence Session held at Chatham Library on Monday 9th May 2005. Two groups of people from the Medway Pensioners' Forum shared memories of life during the war.

GROUP ONE

GK 12 years old born Elephant and Castle, lived in Downham, nr Bromley, evacuated to Sittingbourne, served in Civil defence

JL 8 years old lived in Essex, evacuated to Sussex

MB lived in Strood

GH born in East London, aged 11, evacuated to Cornwall

CE lived in Rochester 鈥� aged 5, evacuated to Wales.

Rationing

? we all had ration books, two ounces of marge, two ounces of butter

Anon - I was evacuated and that was hell, but at home there were 4 of us, my sister, myself, mother, father, and my mother was a very good manager. Having four it was better because you had four rations. I went hungry when I was evacuated to Leicester. The well dried up. When I came back I appreciated my mother鈥檚 cooking.

JL - We used the co-op in Essex. I had four brothers, one sister and I was the eldest so I used to get the shopping. Yes we were hungry at times.

GK - most people that I knew had allotments so they had food. Mum could do anything with bones, stewed up bones, but it was a bit tight. I used to like the powdered egg that the Americans sent over it was very tasty. We used to make omelettes. It was a lot healthier because people made their own cakes etc. There was non of this processed dyes etc in food. We kept chickens but not rabbits. Dad used to boil up potato peelings with oatmeal and chicken.. The animals were fed better, the pigs had all the swill and all the slops.

? I had a neighbour who lived in Strood and she said that everyone was friendly and if they got extra rations people would share it. I never shut my back door then, it was always open.

School and lessons

? We had to go down to the shelter if there was a warning. One girl in the next class got killed because she went home to lunch.

MB - We used to go to people鈥檚 houses and the teacher would come there. We didn鈥檛 really go to school, we did for a while, but then we went to a friend鈥檚 house. I cannot remember how many times a week. Then we went to another lady鈥檚 house at the top of Cliffe Road. When the siren went we used to have to go home. We couldn鈥檛 stay there as there wasn鈥檛 enough room. We were evacuated to Luddesdown but we were only there a few days. We had our meals in a stable and went up in the attic to sleep.

Evacuation

CE - We didn鈥檛 have air raids in Wales, but just had the blackouts. We had our own teacher from Strood. We were 25 miles from Newport, a little mining town, Blaena. We didn鈥檛 have a proper school, we had a series of different huts, like British Legion huts. The infants were in one end, and bigger children in the other end. We had the same teacher all the time. She used to give the boys a good slap on the leg if they misbehaved.

I was five when I was evacuated. I found it traumatic being parted from my brother who was two years older. He was billeted in the same road but that is the only time I remember breaking down, when he went into one house and I had to go to another. They were marvelous. They didn鈥檛 seem to be without eggs or anything. We wouldn鈥檛 have known there was rationing. We were there for the whole of the war. I was very happy there, my brother wasn鈥檛 he didn鈥檛 have such as nice people. He was at the same school but the other end of the room to where I was.

Air raid shelters

People were killed in an Underground tube station. They weren鈥檛 killed by bombs but 200 were killed in a crush to get down the stairs. A terrible thing.

GK 鈥� there were 9? of us and at first we had an Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden made of corrugated sheets. Most people put earth over the top, some people used to grow plants and flowers on top. After that we had another type of shelter named after one of the war ministers. The condensation was horrendous 鈥� I think that鈥檚 why I鈥檝e got arthritis in later life, because of the damp. My eldest brother wouldn鈥檛 go down there. My father was in the Home Guard, when the warning went. People were more frightened in the evening. By the window was the railway and when the anti-aircraft gun went off, it used to knock you out of bed anyway. That鈥檚 when we used to be frightened. My eldest brother used to sleep through anything. We did get bombed out eventually. I think these shelters saved a lot of lives. There was a good community spirit, everyone used to look out for each other then. I was 12 and the impact of what was going on overseas didn鈥檛 effect us as much as it did our parents who had the responsibility for us. My father died in the February and we got bombed out on 16th April, 1941. Father was 40 when he died and Mum coped very well with the rest of us. My mother was pregnant with my youngest brother, so he never saw his father because he died (natural causes 鈥� he was very ill). We had my mother鈥檚 father living with us. Mum was sent to Farnborough ? Hospital, her father was sent to what you鈥檇 call a workhouse in Orpington. When we were bombed out it was a mine and it killed about 48 people in a block of flats behind us. We were split up and we went to this big college, Stockmore College, up in Bromley where the American Red Cross had sent loads of clothes. We were evacuated to Milton Regis in Sittingbourne. There were two big houses 鈥� orphans homes - me and my brothers were in one place and down the road another brother. That鈥檚 what happened to our family. My eldest brother (at about 15) went North because they were building runways for the American planes. If we had stayed in the orphan home, the boys stayed there until 18. But when my mother was able to come down and visit us, she had a choice, she could have left us there, because she was on her own, but she bought us back. We were going to go to Canada, Dad was going to evacuate us to Canada, but the boat that took children there before us, got sunk so we didn鈥檛 go. Otherwise we might have been on the shores in Canada like Roddy MacDowell, the actor, he was an evacuee who went out there and stayed there.

Working Life

GK. Dad used to work for The Daily Mirror. He was a stevedore at Walters Lewis down at Waterloo. He used to unload the newspapers from the barges. He used to tell us that his Dad worked there when they had a horse and cart, and when his Dad was ill, he used to look after the horses when he was 8 years old, because if he didn鈥檛 his Dad would have lost the job. When we moved from the Elephant Castle to the New Downham Estate, he would come home by tram and we would wait for him by the tram stop on Friday nights because he would give us Palm toffees.

? Our next door neighbour used to make sweets with powdered milk and they were quite nice.

VE Day

GK. VE Day I went up to Trafalgar Square with my mate and you were body to body, you couldn鈥檛 move. We went outside the Palace and Churchill at 2 o鈥檆lock was going to announce VE Day over the tannoys. We had had enough and we tried to get back to Charing Cross Station, but we couldn鈥檛. We finished up in Grosvenor Square, which was where the American Embassy was, and the Yanks were throwing chewing gum and cigarettes down to the crowd. I don鈥檛 know how it got there, but there was a bus creeping along, and there were either a New Zealand serviceman or an Australian in a bush hat sitting on top of the bus. It was a wonderful day.

? At our street party, there was dancing and someone got on the piano, I think we had two pianos. If anyone had anything in the war, I think it was piano! We heard about VE Day on the radio.

GK. The war in Europe was over, but they were still fighting out in Japan.

GROUP TWO

TC aged 7 at outbreak of war, lived in Sittingbourne

DA aged 4 at beginning war, lived in Rochester, Delce Road, attended Troy Town school. Not evacuated. Dad was a fireman so we lived near a fire station

DM aged 13, lived in London, evacuated to Exeter

PN aged 9 months, lived in Clapham. Evacuated from Seaford to Cheltenham, Glos.

JW aged 13, lived in Selby, Yorkshire, farm worker in Wisto, Yorkshire. Served in Home Guard, and EW (lived in Jamaica)

ANON aged 8, lived in Bedfordshire.

Rationing and Food

JW. On the farm in Yorkshire, someone came round from the government and said how many acres have you got, and told us we had to increase the amount we produced. We had no-one there to do the work, but we were told to grow more. Later on, some ladies came to help.

DA. I used to work in the grocers shop when I was a teenager for a short spell in the Co-op in Rochester High Street. The sugar come in loose and we used to get the little blue packets and weigh up 2oz sugar, 2oz butter, 2oz lard, wrap it all up and stamp the ration books. Things were rationed for quite a few years after the war was finished. People today, with their huge shopping trolleys, don鈥檛 realize what we had to manage on. We never really went hungry, there was always food on the table, not a lot, but mind you if Mum made a suet pudding you had it for your dinner with gravy on and you had it for your pudding with treacle on for your sweet! I had an illness during the war, and there weren鈥檛 many eggs around, and all the firemen used to give up their allocation of eggs for me so get better with. Mum used to keep rabbits, but not chickens. A lot of people grew their own vegetables.

DM Bread was always a funny grey colour during the war. We had rabbits in the garden and they both died. I was in the field office and we used to stamp the ration books, and the green forms that the meat coupons came in but the gypsies were the worse, they used to ask for more ration books with a little bit of money on the side, so there was a black market with ration books. They were stealing or selling their books and trying to apply for new ones. That went on quite a lot. People made do without fruit. Apples and bananas were very scarce during the war.

DA If you used to see queue at the sweet shop, you didn鈥檛 know what they were selling, but you would run back to Mum and ask for a few pennies, rush to the sweet shop, get in the queue and not know what you were going to get until you got there.

PN I had to stay with this woman when I was about three when my sister was born and she made this cauliflower with macaroni cheese on and couldn鈥檛 eat it.

DA One of the favourite sandwiches was bread and dripping and we used to dig your way to the bottom of the dripping to get that lovely brown stuff. That was about the best sandwiches we used to have.

PN We used to have bread and dripping on toast and pout salt on it, that was absolute luxury!

DM And they salt is bad for you!

PN My mother registered as a vegetarian, so she got more dairy produce. She didn鈥檛 get meat but she got more butter etc. There was a lot of synthetic foods, they were off ration. There was a blue one and a green one. I remember the green one called Sunut, an artificial fat made out of nut oil. Half of that and half of marge for pastry.

DM We used to exchange our fats if the person next door had gooseberries and vice versa.

DA. When I was a teenager, I worked in the Co-op bakery and that closed down and went over to Strood, so the alternative was to work in the grocery department. I was about 18 and I used to walk there, took about 15 minutes. My friend and I had bikes and we used to cycle everywhere in those days.

DM We were evacuated first of all to Devon, and as a Londoner and I had never tasted that special, thick cream, clotted cream. When we had oats for breakfast and she put this cream in the middle, I said I can鈥檛 eat that and she said 鈥渨ell that鈥檚 all you鈥檝e got for breakfast dear鈥�. She said 鈥渟tir it in, it鈥檒l be all right鈥� but the thought of it was awful. But now I really like it!

? We never got choices of cereal, there was only puffed wheat and corn flakes. You had to queue up for cornflakes though, they weren鈥檛 in the shops very often. Different groceries had different days when things came in. Biscuits you couldn鈥檛 get for instance, because places like Peak Freans in London had been bombed.

Childhood

PN I was at school or kinderkarten at the end of the war. Every afternoon, we had to get these little beds out and lie down and go to sleep. I had a cardboard airport with planes. I also had a glove puppet made out of an old blanket with a little fez hat on it. It was bought in a Red Cross shop in Cheltenham. I had a book 鈥淭om, Dick and Harry鈥� I must have read it dozens of times. I鈥檝e still got both of them.

DA I used to go to the fireman鈥檚 Christmas Party every year and they used to make everything. I have still have a needlework box that opened up and I still have it and keep odd and ends and tools in it. You couldn鈥檛 buy toys, you had to make everything.

DM We made little knitted dolls and teddies in the shelter.

VE Day

PN I don鈥檛 remember much but a parade went through the High Street in Cheltenham and my mother gave us small bags of flour to throw about. I remember going to a pantomime in Cheltenham and there were people pulling a rope with Hitler on the end of it.

DM My sister and I went over to Westminster and we were literally carried away by the crowd, we didn鈥檛 even walk. The next thing we knew, we were right at the top of Trafalgar Square with the crowd and then during the day we went into St James鈥� Park, which is next to Parliament, and we just at on the grass and during the whole of the night people were playing musical instruments and piano accordions, mouth organs.

DA We celebrated with street parties, but with being a main road we went along to Rochester Avenue where they had blocked it off and got all the trestles out and all the food.

? We probably had ham and shrimp paste and homemade jams. People still made homemade jams, even in London we had plum trees.

Air raids

DM We had a shelter at the end of the road, and we used to go in the shelter every night. The warden used to come in about 9 o鈥檆lock with a big jug of cocoa we used to bed down for the night. If we were alive the next morning we would look around and see how far were the bombs that we had hear during the night. We had no roof one day when we came out, no windows in. We went in the next door neighbour鈥檚. People were very friendly all the time. If you had no roof in your house, your neighbours would say 鈥測ou鈥檙e stopping with me tonight.鈥� If you had no roof, you just had to have a tarpaulin, there was no-one to repair anything like that. There were only women at home, most of the men were away. The wardens were very elderly men, not young men. That鈥檚 when they used to evacuate you if they thought it was needed. I was evacuated with my mother to Reading with the under fives, but we weren鈥檛 down there very long before Reading got bombed. It was one of those wars that was everywhere. When I was down at Exeter for a year that was bombed, the Cathedral was bombed. You couldn鈥檛 run away from it.
We had all the Canadians and the Americans down near Reading. I was 18 at the time and we thought about all those men who were the first to be killed in the D-Day landings.

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