大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Lin Freeman of Radio Derby CSV on behalf of Mrs N. Jacques and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

In 1942 aged about 12, I attended the local girls' secondary school in London and most things were in short supply. Food was rationed but not bread and potatoes, and people with gardens grew vegetables if they could and a cock crowed nearby in the early morning. Factory made clothes were rationed by a points system and made with the minimum of material. There were many Government posters about giving good advice such as 'is your journey really necessary?', and 'make do and mend'.
I had already learnt to make clothes and I was amazed to see a new teacher, who left soon after, wearing a dress with a full gathered skirt in a bright and enormous flowery pattern, and I thought it must be a clever use of old window curtains.
At school great attention was paid to avoiding waste. We had 'rough books' of very poor quality paper for classroom exercises and roughwork and then single sheeets of file paper for homework to hand in. Each page had to be filled by the next exercise if there was a space left, and each rough book was checked by the teacher to see that we had left no gaps. Our pencils were used down to the smallest stubs.
I expect that this was the same in all schools because in my experience everyone did their best. We knew that merchantships were sunk bringing in essential supplies and food. It was just the way life was at that time, but the habits of the time stay when learnt at that young age.
When the flying bomb (V1) raids began in about 1944 we all knew the rumbling sound they made and you only had to worry if their engines cut out as then they would come down. I used to walk home for lunch through a cemetery and planned to shelter behind a gravestone if this happened, but fortunately for me it never did. The high explosive V2 rockets landed before you heard them so there was no point in trying to avoid them. We followed the news avidly on radio, from newspapers and cinema newsreels. The National Anthems of all 'The Occupied Countries' were played before the 大象传媒 radio news, each Sunday evening I think it was. It was very moving.

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