大象传媒

In September 1939 at the start of the war, I was 9 months old so I obviously can't remember much until I was about aged about 4. I was born into a family unit of three, having a sister who was about 4 1/2 yrs older. By the time I arrived they were settled and established in a rented house close to a metal window factory where my father worked. This factory was in the next street, over from the back of our house, about 120 yards away. It was soon transformed into a munitions factory at the beginning of the war, which the Germans tried unsuccessfully to bomb. Unfortunately they hit many houses around it. One of my father's jobs was to walk the roofs each night to ensure a complete blackout.
At the time that I can start to remember, we had all got into a war routine which was natural to me because I had known nothing else and I remember my sister going to school with her gas mask slung over her shoulder. My father worked all hours at the factory but still found time to keep chickens, tend an allotment and keep a vegetable garden in order to provide us with fresh food. To obtain chicken food he sought permission from farmers to glean the fields of the loose heads of corn. This was, of course, before combine harvesters when they had to cut, sheaf and collect the harvested crops and take them to the yard for threshing. He would bring the bags of wheat home to the shed beside the chicken house where he had laid an old iron bed frame with wire netting on top upon four beer crates, with a piece of lino underneath. He put the straw on top of the frame and we children would play on top, causing the corn to drop through to the lino thus separating the wheat from the straw. On some occasions he would bring home a ferret - I assume it was borrowed - and at the weekend he cycled off, returning several hours later with some dead rabbits hanging from his handlebars. He also managed to find time to do many other things like make our wooden toys, mend pots and pans, mend shoes, repair bicycles, and make items like small shovels, dustpans or ash pans. All this was done in the shed at the bottom of the garden by the light of a hurricane lamp or candles which had to be extinguished if the siren sounded. He knew who needed help with fruit picking and would have a box of fruit as payment for his help. Mother preserved this fruit in Kilner jars using Camden tablets as a preservative. She also made brawn from pigs heads, or chitterlins from the intestines, all bought home in a bucket by dad to make the ration go further.
Sometimes when dad was at work, even though I was only about 4 yrs old, I would walk to the bottom end of the factory and wait for him to leave off work. While waiting at the door I watched the girls in their overalls making and welding up the bailey bridges. The factory had by then been converted into making munitions and in the yard on the other side of the road were stacks of boxes which were called ammo boxes. At that age I didn't know, and wasn't told, that ammo boxes were for ammunition. I was probably too young to understand the full implication of this anyway. At other times I walked to the fire station where I also stood at the door, this time to watch the firemen working on their engines and equipment. It was always a busy place because of the high demand for their services. I got to know some of the firemen because they worked at the factory with my father. I distinctly remember, at the end of the war, how they collected sections from many doodle-bugs and put them together on an old lorry trailer to show people what a doodle-bug looked like. Up until the time of the first of these doodle-bugs coming over, when the siren sounded, we children had to go over the road to an elderly lady whom we called granny, to sit under her Morrison shelter in her little cottage. When the doodle-bugs came over we could go out in the garden quite safely because they didn't shoot at us and with the roar of the rocket engine and flames shooting out of the back, we knew they would go right over us.
In those days several of the tradesmen had a horse and cart, including the milkman, the coalman and the rag and bone man who collected rags and rabbit skins, and when we heard the horse in the street someone would go out with a bucket and shovel in case there was manure to bring home for fertiliser for the garden. We had real organic food in those days.
Like everyone else we had blackout shutters. Ours were roofing felt in a wooden frame and they clipped on the outside of the windows. We used gas lamps in the kitchen and sitting room and candles everywhere else. We listened to the radio which had two stations - the Home Service and the Light Programme - and we listened to the news to find out what was happening in the war. To a small child the propaganda was very frightening and to this day I cannot watch war films or military action because of the memories and images in my mind.
Life seemed to go on in much the same way throughout the war and by the time it had ended I had started school. We still had to carry our gas mask, but the only noticeable difference was that the siren didn't go and we didn't have to take shelter. Life just seemed easier.
The women who were billeted with families around the factory all went back to their homes and later on, families got back together again when the men returned. Life was a bit easier but there were still shortages and rationing for a few years more and some items were scarce.
It is with hindsight and lots of memories that I realise how difficult it was for everybody to keep going, especially those families whose men were at war. The worry and struggle must have been absolutely terrible for them. With the mental marks it made on me from an early and impressionable age I just hope that we can all learn from the horrors of war and realise that it must never happen again. There are no winners in a war, only losers.

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