- Contributed by听
- championSacredHeart
- People in story:听
- Mrs Margaret Byrnes
- Location of story:听
- North East England
- Background to story:听
- Civilian
- Article ID:听
- A4373796
- Contributed on:听
- 06 July 2005
Margaret Byrnes was six when war was declared as she was playing in the garden and the doors along street all seemed to open at once as the women walked out with white tea towels wrapped round there hands. She was living in Grangetown at the time. By 1940 she had two sisters.
Margaret and everyone else carried a gasmask with them even to school, most people carried their gasmasks less and less as the war progressed. She was evacuated from her home because there was an unexploded bomb in the cornfield behind their house but her house was never bombed. She got sent to her grandmas which was also in Grangetown but she was sent there for safety. Although her house wasn鈥檛 bombed she lost relatives from air raids.
There wasn鈥檛 only food rationed but clothes as well but Margaret passed her old clothes to her younger sisters. The food which was rationed was the basic food supply of: milk, butter, sugar, jam and marmalade. Her Mother and other women traded these items to get rid of the items they didn鈥檛 like and get the items they liked. For these rations they could only go to one shop, were they would get there ration book stamped for that week.
With Margaret being young the war was an adventure she only got scared during bad air raids. When the war was over there were parties in the street.
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