大象传媒

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A WARTIME CHILDHOOD

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I was six years old when the second World War started and my sister just two. We lived with our parents in a newly built end-of-terrace house on a small estate on the outskirts of a village near Hainult Forest, some 20 odd miles from London. The 'car era' had not begun so the houses were built without garages and there were no cars parked in the streets as there are now. My father cycled to work on the outskirts of the City. We were a cycling family. One of my earliest memories is our Sunday afternoon cycle rides into the surrounding countryside - my sister in a chairseat on the back of Dad's bike, Mum next on an old upright model nicknamed 'The Bedstead", and me pedalling away at the rear on a solid tyred 'Fairy Cycle' as it was then called.

At first being at war made little difference to our family, apart from the novelty of the blackout, rationing, and having an Anderson shelter in the back garden. Then we were issued with gas masks (another diversion for us children). I was cross because I only qualified for a Junior adult model, but my sister as she was under five years old, had a "Mickey Mouse" version, which was much more fun. We had to carry the gas masks with us everywhere in a shoulder bag as at the outbreak of war gas attacks were expected. It says a lot for our parents that although they must have been terribly worried by the situation, we just thought of it as a game and were only slightly anxious about the claustrophobic effect of trying them on for gas mask drill.

School was Hainult Forest Church of England Primary about a mile away and I walked there and back twice a day with Ronnie from next door, my fellow mischief-maker. Hazel, my little sister, joined us when she was old enough.

There were two classes, Infants and Juniors, about fifty to sixty children in all. A brick shelter was built in the playground. When the Air Raid warning went we filed in and sat on wooden benches in the dimly lit, dank smelling shelter. Normal lessons were suspended and we had singing from the National Song Book and Horlicks tablets were handed round in lieu of sweets (which were scarce and rationed), and generally a good time was had by all until the All Clear went.

We learned to cope with rationing and each had a Ration Book. Later in the war my little sister complicated domestic matters by becoming vegetarian. Her Ration Book had to be altered to an extra allowance of cheese instead of meat. This was because during the war (apart from Digging for Victory and trying to produce as many homegrown vegetables as possible), people were also urged to keep livestock; pigs, poultry and rabbits, for food. One awful day, Timid, our favourite rabbit, was presented at mealtime, for reasons of economy. This was too much for my little sister - hence, a year of vegetarianism. I could not eat Timid either but was prepared to be magnanimous about unknown animals.

As well as rabbits, another of Mum's wartime hobbies was keeping a few laying hens for eggs to supplement our rations. She would buy a dozen day old chicks, bringing them back to our warm kitchen in a cardboard box, placed next to the range, where they would spend a week or so, cheeping loudly, while a coop and run was made for them in the garden. We loved to pick up the little yellow balls of fluff to pet them. Sometimes there was the odd black one among them, who came in for some extra affection. When their incessant cheep-cheep got to be too much of a good thing, we would drape a large duster across the top of their box, and the cheeping would get more and more drowsy, until they were all asleep until morning feeding time.

Once outside they became less popular as they grew into pullets and lost their fluffy down to bare patches as adult feathers grew and they became scraggy and bossy. It was our job to feed them, on coming back from school, cooking saved up potato peelings in the Chicken saucepan, adding balancer meal, and dolloping large lumps of this evil smelling gruel into their run. It was no mean feat doing this, surrounded by voracious beaks and flapping wings as half a dozen of them fought to push each other out of the way, eat first, and escape from the run, in that order. We did have a few extra eggs in season, if they did not go off lay, but this daily chore seemed to us a high price to pay!

We got used to the grey Economy loaf, dried eggs and Spam (which we quite liked). But we missed out on early cookery lessons at home as we were seldom allowed to make experimental cakes or pastry as food was so scarce and not to be wasted. However, Mum's cooking was good, especially her pastry. She did not have a rolling pin but used to roll out dough with a clean, empty milk bottle, the raised letters on the glass impressing our tarts and pies with the legend "Hitchman's Dairies", innocently advertising our local milkman. We used to think this very special at the time and quite pitied everybody else who only had plain pastry with no writing on it.

When air raids first started, before we had an Anderson shelter, we used to sleep in the cupboard under the stairs as this was considered the safest place in the house. We had our doubts about this and insisted on inspecting it minutely for spiders before consenting to bed down for the night. Later on we slept on bunks in the shelter. One of the great problems with these shelters was the dampness and condensation on the metal walls, but on the whole people made them quite comfortable with lighting, rugs and tea-making apparatus.

We were evacuated towards the end of the war when flying bombs and rockets were the danger. I was not keen on the idea of going away from home nor of being responsible for my lively little sister but Mum said that if ever we really needed her she would come on her Magic Carpet (as in the film we had recently been to see) and bring us back home, which made it alright and a bit of an adventure again. So we said goodbye to our parents at home, were labelled with our name and address, and sent off to school, gas masks over our shoulders, almost as if it were a normal school day. Standing with my little sister in line in the playground, I looked round for Ronnie hoping for a bit of cheeky reassurance, but he was furiously blinking back the tears like the rest of us.

We were sent to Benhall, a village near Saxmundham, in Suffolk. Ronnie went to Snape, a few miles away from us. It might as well have been another country. We did not meet for weeks and then things were different.

We were not assigned to our billets in advance and one of my bleakest memories is of waiting in a strange schoolroom among a crowd of children who had travelled down with us on the train, hand-in-hand with Hazel, to be chosen by people willing to take us. I believe in some cases, members of the same family, were split up and sent to different places.

We were lucky and were billeted together at Manor Farm where there were two boys of about our own ages and we began to try to settle down. We walked to the two-classroom village school much as we had done at home; learned the names of each of the herd of cows on the farm and took turns to bring them in for milking, watching the milk flowing over the cooler in the dairy. At Harvest Time there was a day long batch-baking session by the farmers' wife (in spite of rationing) and we took this out to the men in the fields, with tea in billycans. The boys had long sticks for rabbiting. As the wheat was cut, the rabbits driven into the centre stand, made wild dashes to escape the combine harvester, and were clumped by the boys. We girls did not care for this game at all. But I can still remember the smell of that wheat field in the sun, the warm tea, buttered scones and teacakes, and then trailing home tired and dusty in the last of the light.

We were evacuated for less than six months, for the war in Europe was drawing to a close, but at our age it seemed like a lifetime. Judging from the letters our parents sent and the visits they made to us, they must have missed us as much as we missed them and home. Hazel went home first after a bout of homesickness brought on by falling face downwards into the nettles from the wall of the old pig sty. I could have returned then but thought I wanted to stay. I knew I had made a big mistake as soon as I ran up the field with the boys to wave goodbye to their train. The farmer's wife took in more evacuees and things changed after that. A few weeks later I caught a bad dose of influenza and wrote to say I wanted to come home. Just as I was falling asleep on the night train going back, Mum reminded me, half jokingly, in a whisper, about the Magic Carpet promise. It made me smile, so did going home. Ironically the area we were sent to must have been more dangerous than where we were living, for Suffolk was where the big American air bases were and a major target for the enemy. Indeed there were several flying bomb raids near Benhall.

We came home with traces of broad Suffolk in our speech for a while but were soon scooped up into the warmth of our family and friends and Manor Farm, Benhall, became just a selection of memories. Warm memories like tucking myself away with a book in one of the big old haywains in the barn, when I did not want to play with the boys, and happy days at haymaking time. But sad memories too. Parents visits, all too short, meeting Ronnie on the road halfway to Snape, our Mum with a message from his Mum (who couldn't come that time), his look of misery. School dinners at Benhall, horrid burnt baked potatoes in their jackets. Even now I can never smell that dish without a wave of loneliness washing over me. And whenever I hear the wail of an Air Raid warning, in an old film or on the radio, it gives me pause, and a half forgotten fear returns.

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