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This is Laura Smith entering Mourice Leach's story onto the website and they fully understand the website terms and conditions of use.

Being a child in WW2

I think during war years children had a more settled diet than today, not as much variation but high in value, out went all the chips and beef burgers and in came the broths and dripping.
The main draw back was the lack of fruit. I remember when we were told Parkers Fruiters in Blind Lane, Silksworth were to sell banana’s on a certain day. I was sent about 7am to queue outside before school, when the shop opened we got our ration of bananas, which I had never seen before. I took then home and was given one. I didn’t like them.
I also remember at school dinner times, I used to go to The British Restaurant in Tunstall Terr where you were given tokens for a meal. Green for soup, red for a dinner and yellow for a sweet, all pretty basic, but were healthy meals.
I used to only have a soup and dinner because the sweets were rubbish, as the custards were made with water not milk.
Most nights after school our teatime meal, was mainly dripping and bread, which I enjoyed. The dripping was made by collecting the fat off cooked meat and putting it into a large jar and left to set. Through the week we would spread it onto bread and add loads of salt.
Most of the children I think were healthier those days as; there were no televisions, computers and play stations. After school you went out into the fresh air every night till dark. I played football nearly every night, with football boots that I got every year for Christmas. They often had the studs removed and leather straps fixed over, so that you could use the boots to go to school in.
During the war years you did not make an appointment at the doctors, you just went and sat at the end of the queue that went round the surgery and wait until it was your turn. We seemed to be a lot tougher children than today. You needed to be really ill to miss a day off school or the School Board came to your door. My parents would make me take a daily doze of Cod Liver Oil every morning before school, which we got together with orange juice, dried eggs and dried milk on a child Ration Card, which I believe we got free.
When I was about 5 years old I remember the air raid siren going, and our family had to rush down to the back of the back yard and into the air raid shelter which was sited at the bottom of the yard.
We sat there for a good few hours, in candlelight. We sang songs, played games and tried to get to sleep. We did this until we heard the ‘All Clear’ sound from the siren; we slowly emerged from the shelter and saw the big bright red glow in the sky, the German planes had been trying to bomb the shipyards, but dropped most bombs on the town itself, the sky aglow with the flames. As we walked up the yard we had to climb over slates, glass, cement and parts of bricks to get to the house, which luckily was still standing, but had lost a good few roof slates and most of the glass from the windows, but not a lot of the inside was damaged.
About 1945 we moved to Silksworth, and I remember often after school, if we heard of any German planes coming down, and bombs etc, we would scout round the area, looking fir bits of salvage, shrapnel etc, which I believed I had quite a collection at the end of the war.

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