大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer from Lincolnshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of John Chappell and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Chappell fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was born in 1931: I was therefore eight years of age only when World War II began in 1939, yet I remember quite clearly 鈥� just as if it were yesterday - the sad, tired voice of Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister, addressing the nation on the wireless on the third of September in that year.

With the terrible announcement that our country was now at war with Germany our quiet, peaceful 1930鈥檚 lives were suddenly turned upside down. My father, too old for the armed services, and called to serve in a so called 鈥渞eserved occupation鈥� anyway (he was a water supply employee) appeared particularly upset by the announcement of war since it caused him to feel a little less useful than he would like to have felt. As for my mother, like most other married women of the 1930鈥檚, she was a housewife. I had two sisters, Jean and Molly; Jean was eleven in 1939 and Molly was six and we all lived together on the height of Troy Hill in the stone house neighbouring my grandparents鈥� house, in Morley.

鈥淒ig for Victory鈥� and 鈥淐areless Talk Costs Lives鈥� were two new slogans for the war. Many signposts were erased and new words entered our vocabulary, words such as dried milk, ration book, identity number, corned beef, blackout, blitz, home guard, stirrup pump, spam, Ministry of Food, and worst of all, black market. In common with everyone else, I was given an identity number which I still remember today.

It is very likely that rationing of food saved many lives throughout the war. It was also a time of very strange experiences: of these one of the strangest was our family鈥檚 trying on the newly acquired gas masks. The government expected gas bombs to be dropped by the enemy, and every person received one of these contraptions. My youngest sister Molly was supplied with the so called Mickey Mouse gas mask which was designed so that very small children would not be made afraid of the forbidding appearance of the ordinary issue.

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