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My Childhood War, by Ivan Sparkes.

I was born in 1930, in a small village in north Wiltshire called Stratton St. Margaret, in a large and rambling house which consisted for two adjoining shops, the butcher’s shop which was organised by my father, and the grocery shop looked after by my mother. I can recall the Silver Jubilee of George V in 1935, when the children were given a china mug and a small tin containing a piece of ‘Jubilee Cake’. Later came the accession of Edward VIII, followed by the problems of his leaving the throne, with my parents very unhappy about his affair with Mrs Simpson. I can also recall the first very laboured broadcast of George VI, trying to overcome his stuttering problem.
The house in which my family lived had the kitchen as its centre, with the iron range with an oven and a ‘hob’ on which the kettle was continually on the boil. The fire was kept in by day and banked down at night, and raked out once a week. The kitchen had a very large extending table, round which we had our meals, and we had a battery wireless for our entertainment. During the war, the table was replaced by a strong steel table shelter, under which I slept with our border collie dog when the enemy raids were expected. The kitchen was the only room with electric light.
Next to the kitchen was the scullery, which had a gas mantle over the big deep butler sink with its hand pump to raise the cold water from our well. It had a gas stove, and a coal boiler for hot water later on which was very second- hand, and which had to be supplemented by buckets and bowls of boiling water which was boiled on the range when a bat was required.
Next to the scullery was the ‘outhouse’ which had a coal fired brick boiler for the washing of clothes, but which was used during the week for rendering down bones and other meat waste to produce dripping, for sale in the butcher shop. The outhouse also had a very large mangle for squeezing the water out of clothes, and for ironing the dry bed sheets, also a hanging airer on which to dry clothes. We also had in the same room a paraffin oven which had two burners and a metal oven box which was placed above the burners to cook our Sunday meal while we were in Church.
To go to the toilet, we had to go out of the outhouse into the yard and up some steps to the ‘earth closet’ where were had squares of torn up newspaper to use in place of toilet paper which was not obtainable during the war. Later on Dad plumbed in a bath and toilet in the bedroom over the kitchen. Before that I had a bath in a zinc hip bath which was filled up in front of the kitchen fire, with a clothes horse round it to give me and my brother and sister some privacy when being bathed.
Going upstairs to bed was an adventure, as we had no gas or electricity upstairs, but relied on candles or small oil lamps. A candle in a candle stick was placed every evening on a high shelf at the top of the stairs to dimly light up the stairs and the landing (not very well) and I found the shadows we cast on the walls and ceiling as we walked upstairs very frightening. There was of course no heating upstairs, and as the floors were covered with linoleum, they were very cold to bare feet. We used hot water bottles which were made of thick glazed pottery or of aluminium, and as they were so very hot when first filled, we use to wrap our night- clothes round them so that they were warm to dress in when going to bed. We also wore flannel bed socks and a night cap to offset the bitter cold at night. When I was fourteen years old, and having left school and at work, I was able to save up for a small battery wireless, so that I could listen to programmes in bed, of course there was no television available in those days.
In the evening, after tea (about 6.30pm), we would settle down around the kitchen table and either read, draw or play games – such as ludo, snakes and ladders, happy families, draughts etc. Dad and Mum closed the shops around 8.00pm and came in to have a cooked supper. Then Dad put on the wireless, there were music programmes such as ‘Palm Court Hotel’ comedy programmes ‘It’s Monday night at Eight o’clock’ and ‘Variety Bandbox’ while later came ‘The Goon Show’ ‘Bill Cotton’ and ‘Itma’ One of my favourites was ‘Cross Atlantic Quiz’ which was very thought provoking!
In the summer we cycled miles! And we went across the field…we had country lanes between the farms. Opposite our house were the tennis courts of the Methodist Church, and if you went to the Sunday School occasionally you could become a member of the tennis club, which was great fun. There were swings and a roundabout up at the recreation ground, but as that was about a mile and a half away, we were’nt often allowed to go there unless my elder brother looked after us. Much of our time out of school was spent in the back lanes which bisected the village and followed the stream, or playing ball in the streets. Once a year the village formed a committee to put on a show…my sister took part in ‘Mikado’, also I remember to Village Fetes which took place in the Rectory Gardens.
We had two shops, and I soon learnt how to weigh-up and serve in the grocery section. Behind the counter was a row of large deep drawers which before the war were filled with raisons, currants, mixed dried fruit, prunes, apricots, sugar and all sorts of similar products. The butcher shop was out of bounds to me, because of the knives and axes and choppers used in cutting up the meat. But I was able to help mincing up the meat to make sausages, and turning the handle of the sausage machine which pushed the mixture into the skins. The other side of the yard was the cellar with the cold store for meat. This was a large walk-in freezer – and this is where we went during the day-time air raids. Next to it was the great barrel of paraffin which I had to serve with a pint measure, filling up the customer’s containers.
Across the road were the fattening stalls for lambs, cattle and pigs which were used for very young animals which would be fattened up to supplement the rather meagre meat rations, and next was the slaughter house where Dad killed the animals for the Butcher shop. Next to that was the stable of our horse, Bess, who was a jet black mare with a very broad back, I used to love riding bareback on her when she was taken back to the stables after a days work. She was used to pull the butchers cart used for deliveries to the villages around Stratton. We had a succession of old English sheepdogs who were trained to run alongside the cart as it travelled, and lie under the cart, ready to bark at who anyone approached it when the butcher was at a door delivering the meat. My parents lived at the shops from 1921 to 1947, when they retired to live in my grandfather’s house in Swindon.
Because of the war, we had to be very careful in observing the ‘Black-out’ regulations. We had screens made to cover the windows which were put up at night so that no shaft of light could be seen from outside the house, otherwise a loud voice would call out ‘put out that ** light’ As our village was quite near the Railway Repair Shed of the Great Western Railway, the Germans were anxious to bomb them out of action. Then, when the bombers came over, both by day and by night, we would hear the wail of the air-raid siren and get somewhere safe. If we were at school, this meant dashing alongside the hedges bordering the playing fields and hiding in the ditches…hoping they weren’t full of water, as we had no air-raid shelters at school.
All the windows of the houses, the shops and the school were criss-crossed with sticky strip of paper about two inches wide, so that when the windows were damaged by blast, the glass would not fly everywhere. As our shop windows were very large, I had quite a job doing this, and one supplier, I think it was ‘Persil’ provided my parents with rolls of glue-backed strips of paper, suitably printed with their advertisements. We were not supposed to be on the street after dark, but we flitted around the back-lanes with our torches, all of which had to be painted black over half of the glass, so as to reduce the amount of light they gave out at night. There was a great commotion in the village when a spitfire crashed into the chestnut tree at the cross-roads in the main street, killing the crew. We also saw an accident to the Italian prisoners of war lorry when it swung around the corner too sharply, and several were shaken-up or injured. They were treated by the villagers quite sympathetically, as there wasn’t quite the same hatred of the Italians as there was about the Germans.
One of my jobs was to feed up the sheep and cattle which Dad was fattening up, also to take boxes of groceries and meat to customers by bicycle on Saturday mornings. For this I was rewarded with 6d (2 1/2p) and with this I was able to catch a bus into the nearest town and back, at 1 ½ pence each way, also have fish and chips at 3d. Dad also gave me 9d for the cinema, so if I had an ice cream in during the film, I had to walk 2 ½ miles home. When we talk about the up-to-date four or six screen cinemas of today, they fade in significance when I recall the variety or films available during the war. We have seven cinemas in Swindon (our nearest town) carrying such names as ‘The Savoy’; ‘The Regent’; ‘The Arcadia’; ‘The Palace’(also called the ‘Fleapit’); ‘The Empire’; and two others whose names I can’t recall. All of which had films running from Mondays to Wednesdays, then changed programmes for Thursdays to Saturdays, then special rather more adult films on Sundays!
In 1941 Mrs Churchill (Winston’s wife) announced she was collecting for ‘Red Cross to Russia Fund’, and as I had always been interested in museums and old things, I went around the village cadging things from people which had stories connected with them. Then I whitewashed one of Dad’s outhouses and set up a display for a week, and raised £5 which, at that time, was more than a man’s wage for a week. I sent the money to Mrs Churchill, and had a certificate and a pleasant letter back.
Many things, besides food, were very short during the war! Clothes needed coupons in order to buy them, and if a girl was getting marries, all her family and friends saved up their own coupons to give her to ensure she could start off right. Holidays were also not possible, unless you could get petrol, which was difficult. I remember by uncle had his car raised up on bricks in his garage to keep the tyres firm until the end of the war when he could use it again. My Father had a Brough 1000cc motorcycle which had a side-car which could take my mother, my elder sister and myself on mother’s lap, as well as my older brother on the pillion, so I remember us going to Wookey Hole on one occasion, which seemed a great adventure. At school there was no trips to France, or the Stratford-on-Avon! I recall one trip to the local Sewerage Works, which went down like a lead balloon, but one highlight was a visit to the Gas Works, which was dead boring until we asked if we could go up on the gasometer itself. This was quite exciting when climbing up the steel ladder fixed to the side of the first tank…but when we started on the ladder alongside the second tank, we realised it was not attached to the top, and so swayed in the wind. Instead to climbing up quietly one at a time, we all clambered up, jumped across the gap on to the flat top and ran around…I could easily get nightmares now about how dangerous it was…and we loved it and all wrote pages of screed about how exciting it was.
My Father, as well as running the Butcher Shop by day, was the Captain of the AFS (The Auxiliary Fire Service)in the village, and during the 1940’s spent many days at Bath and Bristol helping other fire brigades fight the fires and rescue people, while my brother, until he was 17 and went into the Fleet Air Arm, was in the Home Guard.
As we had several spare bedrooms, we were allocated two evacuees –two girls who came from Barking Creek. They stayed with us until the main bombing of London was over, when they were collected by their families. We also had two of the nursing staff of the local hospital billeted on us, when it became a Military Hospital. So you can see my home was very full up all the time. At Christmas we were all asked to invite some of the US Airmen serving locally, to spend the festive season with us. We were lucky, as we had a full size snooker table in one of the lofts, so they had a fine time playing snooker and billiards – the also brought a lot of what we felt was luxury food and presents with them. Following the invasion of Europe and the end of the war from our point of view, things didn’t change much in the way of food or luxuries being more available. I recall that parachute cloth was released and very popular for women in making clothes, and also the maps used in the D.Day invasions and later air drops were made of ‘silk’ or something similar and I had a shirt which my mother made up which looked a bit like a walking ordnance map! I was very proud of it!
At Easter 1944 I left school at the age of 14 and took a two year building course – but when that finished I was taken on as a temporary assistant at the Swindon Library until it was time for me to do my National Service, most of which I spent in Egypt, which was great. I was demobbed in June 1950, and returned to the Library…thinking my war was over. Only about six months later the Suez Crisis broke-out, and I was recalled to service for a short while, but stayed on reserve for a number of years until things settled down.

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