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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by RICHARD FIELD on behalf of MARGARET MORETON and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

By Margaret Moreton
(as related to Richard Field)

I first heard that war had been declared while I was attending chapel with my parents. Someone went up to the minister while he was preaching and whispered something in his ear, and he then announced the news.
After the service, while walking home with my Mum and Dad, I asked them ‘What is war?’ It wasn’t a word in my vocabulary.
Dad, whose memory went back to the Boer War, told me that I shouldn’t be frightened, although it would be something which would change all our lives.
After that things did start to change, but quite slowly.
I remember people building Anderson shelters in their gardens, and there was even a shelter you could build round your dining room table.
But we didn’t go in for any of that. Mum was claustrophobic. Besides, we all agreed that the safest place was in the garden, and if the sirens went we would go out and stand there well away from the house.
Soon afterwards slogans began to appear. Some of them were by the cartoonist Fougasse. They had messages like ‘Careless talk costs lives’; ‘Walls have ears’ and ‘Dig for victory’ I didn’t quite understand what they were all about.
I do remember one day the headmaster coming into our class and saying to us: ‘What would you do if you saw an injured German soldier lying in the road?’
I put up my hand and said: ‘I’d take him home for a cup of tea’. I’d remembered the Good Samaritan story at chapel.
But this wasn’t the reply the headmaster wanted, and I was made to go up to the front of the class and stand there in disgrace!

Most vivid memories

My most vivid memories of the war were when the Coventry raids started, and also the day a landmine was dropped in the field just behind our house.
Coventry was only about 15 miles from our village, and I remember going to the bottom of the garden and standing on a seat and seeing the glow over Coventry. It was just like a gigantic firework display. There was a terrible noise, with the bombs dropping and exploding, and rattle of ack-ack guns and the whine of aircraft. It was all very, very frightening.
Another very vivid memory was the landmine which dropped in a field just behind our house but failed to explode. It had been dropped by an aeroplane and come down on a parachute. We were all very scared what might happen, but fortunately the bomb disposal people took care of it and it.
However, once it was made safe, there was a terrific scramble to get bits of the parachute silk. The girls wanted get enough of it to make silk knickers, although I was too young be bothered with all that!
My father was a foreman in the local boot and shoe factory and my brother worked in another boot and shoe factory. His was a reserved occupation because they were making army boots. However not everyone understood this and once he got some white feathers sent to him. That was very upsetting.
Because of the strict rationing many people resorted to doing a bit of bartering. I remember Mum used to send half a packet of tea to the local farmer, and in exchange he would send back three or four cracked eggs (the cracked ones didn’t have to go to the depot). It was surprising just how many eggs got cracked!
My uncle was a farmer and he used to bring stuff from the farm to different members of the family. He still had a car, so set off one day with his boot full of joints of lamb and pork and some chickens and eggs, and on the way was stopped by a special constable because seeing cars driving around was quite a rare spectacle.
‘What have you got in your boot?’ asked the constable.
My uncle replied ‘Oh, I’ve got half a sheep, half a pig, some chickens and some eggs’.
The constable replied ‘Don’t you wish you had!’ and waved him on. So Aunt Flo got her leg of lamb after all!

Helping each other

I remember how people used to help each other in those days. If someone in the village had a wedding people would chip in with a handful of sultanas, or a few eggs or a half a bag of flour. That was one of the great things about the war — the way it brought everyone together.
I remember we were told we could only have five inches of water in our baths. Dad used to bring back scraps of leather from the factory and we had a fine old blaze on a Friday night when we all had our baths.
Everyone, of course, had to black out their houses. Dad made shutters for our windows, and all the curtains had to be lined so no light showed outside. I remember the ARP warden, with his tin hat and whistle, coming round a few times to say: ‘You’re showing a chink of light. Turn it off!’
All the signposts were taken down, so it was very difficult to find your way around. We also had it drummed into us at school that we mustn’t talk to any strangers or tell anyone where we were in case they were the enemy.’
We had evacuees in Earl Shilton. I remember one day, when my Mum was out, I opened the door and a billeting officer asked me if I could take in two refugees. I said I thought so, and the two girls came in, and we were all playing in front of the fire when mother came home. She was a bit nonplussed, but had to accept it.
The two girls came from the slums of Birmingham and I must say they were absolutely filthy. In fact I caught head lice from them, which didn’t please Mum.
Their clothes were so old and ragged that Mum set about finding new clothes for them, which wasn’t easy with the rationing. She managed to find some odds and ends and got something to replace their old clothes, which she had had to get rid of.
Later, when their own mother came to visit us, she was very angry to see her girls in these new make-shift clothes, and this caused a real row. A bit later she took the girls away and took them back to Birmingham despite all the bombing there. I never heard what happened to them.

‘Germany calling’

Despite the war, we still managed to keep quite cheerful. We made our own entertainment in the chapel hall, and most weekends had concerts with monologues, songs and people playing the piano, and these were always very well attended because, of course, nobody had TV in those days.
We also used to enjoy the wireless. We could always recognise the voice of Alvar Liddell and Frank Phillips.
Then we always had a smile when Lord Haw Haw came on. He always started with: ‘Germany calling’ It made Dad laugh.
I always liked Workers’ Playtime with Mrs Mop and Moanalot (‘It’s being so cheerful that keeps me going’) and Music While You Work which was supposed to cheer up people in the factories. I also loved Saturday Night Theatre which had some really good plays.
The newspapers in those days were very thin, usually with only four pages. At the time of the D-Day landings in 1944, they reproduced some maps showing what had happened. We stuck this up on the kitchen wall, and used to refer it to when Alvar Liddell told us the latest news from France.
I vividly remember VJ-Day. I was a teenager then and was away with a school group on a camp at a farm. We were out in the fields helping with the harvest. Suddenly, the church bells started ringing and we all knew what it meant. We all danced a jig round the straw sheaves — and we all cheered.
But, of course, none of us had ever known what normal life was like, so we were very excited about what might change, but, in fact, things changed only very slowly.
In fact I remember nine years later, when I got married, there was still rationing, and I had to take my ration book on my honeymoon.
At the place we stayed they asked for the ration book, and out fell some confetti. I blushed a bit and said quickly ‘We’ve just come from a wedding.’ I think they probably guessed it was my own!

END

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