大象传媒

Oakham,
Rutland
13/01/05
Experiences during the Second World War.
I was born in Watford in 1936, but subsequently lived in Rickmansworth, Herts . I was too young to remember much about the early days of the war but here are some things which I can recall.
I remember huge silver barrage balloons, close to us we went to London on the Metropolitan Railway. They had visible cables attached to them. I can鈥檛 remember any bomb damage in the West End. When we went on trains it was often very crowded, and it was standard practice for us children to be sat on the laps of complete strangers during the half hour journey. We happened to go shopping in London on the day before VE day. Everyone was most excited and seemed to know that the next day would be really important.
When the war broke out we were evacuated to East Kennett, in Wiltshire, for a few weeks with two other families, while the fathers installed Anderson shelters in their back gardens. I didn鈥檛 know they were made of corrugated iron : ours seemed to be bare concrete inside.
Once they were installed we slept in there for the duration of the Blitz, and also later on when the Doodlebugs came. We had two adult bunks which overlapped at the feet ends, and shorter child sized bunks. I don鈥檛 remember where we put the Karri-Kot which contained my brother after he was born in 1943. We had an electric cable running into the shelter providing light and heat, from a radiant fire. We all knew the silhouettes of the British and German planes, and were expected to dive for shelter if we saw an enemy plane. The stopping of the sound of a Doodlebug鈥檚 engine required instant rushing to the shelter, with no stopping to collect anything. I don鈥檛 remember any rockets at all.
I had a lot of passed-on clothes from a slightly older friend, and my sister had them next, before they went to a younger cousin. Also tricycles, scooters and fairy bikes were passed on.
My father was too old to be in the services, and he was a teacher. He used to go fire watching at night at the school where he taught. They had a tower from which a lot of N.W. London was visible. I suppose he must have cycled there in the darkness.throughout the war. I can remember him putting mapping pins in his maps, probably from the Daily Telegraph, as he followed the campaigns across Europe, particularly after D-Day. I was older by then.
We did possess a car but it stayed in the garage 鈥渦p on bricks鈥�, and I cannot remember when it was back in use. But some time after the war I remember, at Chorleywood, a very pleasant and helpful Italian prisoner of war helping my mother to change a punctured wheel.
We were registered poultry producers, which meant that we were responsible for providing eggs to our customers, and they had to give us kitchen scraps to feed to the hens. I remember great saucepans full of rather smelly potatoes being stewed up on the gas stove, and a mysterious compound called Karswood Poultry Spice which we added to the food.
When I went shopping with my mother she used to leave me in any queue we saw, in case the queue was for a commodity in short supply, which had just arrived at a shop. We were registered, I think, with the grocer shop called Cullens in Rickmansworth High Street.
Gas masks were of course carried at all times early in the war and I had an American cloth cover for mine, which I can only recall in a shabby state. It was very exciting when my brother鈥檚 gas mask arrived ; was it really big enough to put a whole baby in ?
Local bombing did not worry me as far as I can remember. I was a bit sorry for our fairly near neighbours, the O鈥橲ullivans, whose house got a direct hit, about a hundred yards away.
The local British Restaurant was situated at The Bury, a big house near the Canal. Here we went for economical meals, probably at the instigation of my father, an ethical man who favoured a responsible attitude in the community. He felt that the food would be more econonically cooked on a larger scale. He also was careful about the depth of the bath water in our house, and was very against the black market, either in commodities or in coupons.
We didn鈥檛 have any bananas or oranges, but we did get a food parcel from maybe the USA with strangely sticky boiled sweets in, in a tin. Chocolate powder too, I think.
I don鈥檛 know if the Harvest Camps my father used to organise at Merchant Taylors school, where the boys went to Olney in Bucks to help with the harvest, were in the war or just after.
His parents lived at Felixstowe in Suffolk, and we could not go on the beach there during the war. During the late 1940s, we could save up sugar from the ration and take it to Felixstowe where a shop converted your sugar into real sweets ; it was at the top of Bent Hill. Of course, like all children, I can remember the fantastic day sweet rationing ended.

Mary Bagley, Oakham.

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