1939 - 1945
IVY MITCHELL nee PULLMAN RECALLED 17th Jan 2009
"I was born at Templecombe but was working in Sherborne at the start of the war. If I had stayed working at the boys and girls school I probably would not have been called up but I went to work at Milborne Port Glove Factory and that was when I was called up. I was sent to work in Reading for four years. First I had to fill shells, not the very big ones, and then later on I was trained to test them - that was dangerous. You had flames coming out of the machine around your legs. I was in lodgings and had a day off a fortnight. I couldn’t afford to go home more than once a month. My Uncle who was a Police Inspector at Bognor Regis used to pay for me to go to stay with him once a month.
I used to travel from Templecombe by train and changed at Basingstoke. I was in lodgings. I had three days off one Christmas and was going to travel back with my friend. We knew the train would be packed so we gathered a bunch of prickly holly. We soon cleared a space.
I was quite popular because I didn’t take sugar so my sugar ration was shared with the others. There was hardly any cake. Sometimes we managed to get some Huntley and Palmers cake - but that was under the carpet! It was lovely.
If we had relations working in food factories they used to share the extras their employers gave them. We swapped with something we could send them. Father used to shoot rabbits and we sent them up to Bristol relations. They used to send back cheese from the factory they worked in.
My friend’s brother was in the army. He sent a wooden box of fruit to me from France. We couldn’t get any. When it arrived the fruit had been stolen and all I got was the empty box!"
Reading
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Ivy Mitchell
Ivy Mitchell nee Pullman born at Templecombe (90 in November 2008) and sent to work in Reading filling shells.
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1939 - 1945
"We were not far from Biggin Hill airfield. We had big guns on wheels near us and a lot of plane activity. The guns did not actually have the range to hit the planes that flew over on their way to the city. I wasn't frightened. We lived in a bungalow. We were self sufficient. Kent had a lot of farms. Dad was a good gardener and Mum was a good cook. I was brought up on rations but we were not short of anything really. Dad kept rabbits, ducks and chickens so we had meat and eggs. I do remember the sweet rations though and thought it unfair that adults got a pound of sweets a month but children only three quarters of a pound!. We only had 2 ounces of butter a week. Word soon spread around the village when oranges came in. Mum would send me round to the greengrocers to stand in the queue. We didn't have bananas as you had to have a green ration book to have those. [a baby's ration book] Mum used to buy a large joint of beef and pot roast it so we had it hot on Sunday, cold on Monday and Tuesday and then the rest was minced. When that ran out Mum would make a bacon pudding. I didn't like it. It was the one meal I didn't like. She used to cut up the fatty ends of bacon and make it into a doughy pudding that was steamed in a handkerchief. I was evacuated to Birmingham when I was six. I hated it. After six weeks I wrote to Mum.
"Dear Mum. Take me home".
We were bombed a lot. We could see the fires over London during the blitz. Our bungalow was fire bombed. It destroyed the main bedroom but they managed to put the fire out before it reached the rest of the building. I remember the Doodlebugs too. The bombing was heavy. I remember the noise. When the noise stopped we ran inside and sheltered. A landmine hit the school next door. Fortunately it was empty at the time. We were smothered in plaster, glass and debris. The school was completely destroyed. A whole row of cottages was hit a short distance away and everyone was killed."
Kent and Birmingham
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Pam Whiting
Pam was the daughter of Florence, known as May, and Walter Harrison. They lived at St Paul's Cray, a village in Kent about 16 miles from the heart of London.
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1939 - 1945
"My first memories of the wartime era are as a schoolboy in the late 1930s becoming aware of the hushed tones of my elders on talking of the European News. I became a Corporal in the OTC (Officers Training Corps). Our equipment was still of the First World War era - no wireless and our Dispatch Riders were mounted on horseback! We wore puttees and formed fours and were only allowed to read serious newspapers - the Daily Mirror with its strip cartoon of Jane was forbidden.
At the outbreak of war I was on a three generation holiday afloat in Norfolk and, whilst keeping in touch daily with the family business in London, we decided not to navigate back to base because it seemed there was a lot of unnecessary ill informed panic in the big city, which was confirmed when we returned a fortnight later. The our panic started because we had to make blacoouts, prepare safe areas and fit shields to our vehicle headlights.
We had to support such civilian groups as the Local Defence Volunteers, the Auxiliary Fire Service and the Royal Observer Corps and observe Air Raid Precautions. We assisted with the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force. For this we had a small yacht available on the Medway but although registered with large authorised inscriptions on both sides, she was laid-up and so out of commission. Some of our staff were leaving due to Conscription and were replaced by retired members. Then day and night bombing made the journey from the suburbs to the city a challenge because of all the new diversions and the road signs had been removed, as they had nationwide for reasons of security. Phrases such as "careless talk costs lives" - "be like dad, keep mum" - "dig for victory" - "make do and mend" and "waste not want not" were often heard.
We were finally fire bombed out of London. This was the only time my father was reduced to tears when he saw our family firm of stationers and newspaper makers, established in the 18th Century, reduced to a shell. We needed special dispensation to enter the building. There was some surprising salvage in the cellars where the lack of oxygen had left the antracite unconsumed and the bonded methylated spirits still in its Winchesters had failed to explode! The safe on the ground floor was a complete melt down but our industrial textiles stored as heavy weight rolls on steel racks were found marketable after severe trimming!
As an indentured apprentice one of my jobs was to make an inventory of the building's contents to support our war damage insurance claim. Whilst our turnover and revenue in this trade were seriously reduced this was somewhat offset by diversification as a government sub-contractor working from home in engineering on behalf of the war effort.
A twelve hour day was followed by home guard fire watching and anti-looting patrols. We were now fully kitted out , including bayonets, .300 rifles and five rounds of ammo. Our training was on-going from Lewis and Vickers machine guns and eventually a Tommy gun. We also had to maintain a flame thrower kept ready at our local road block and practice throwing live hand grenades. We did have a few field telephones but mainly relied on the Morse Code and signalling with flags. On the lighter side we went recruiting with our drum and fife band. As a former ceremonial bugler from my schooldays I was reduced to clashing the cymbals!
Although I was in a reserved occupation, call up papers duly arrived from the RAF, who were short of engineers. After some four months initial training I was posted to Ayr, where we were under canvas in a bell tent on cold, wet, soggy ground in winter, followed by Chester where conditions were much better. Here we became sufficiently skilled to be able, as one of several teams, to fetch an aircraft in for a service, change a Merlin in-line or Hercules radial engine, including all the associated components and ground test all within 24 hours. For a couple of months we were working a seven day week, 12 hours a day. For some of us this was overpowering, bearing in mind the care needed in servicing an aircraft; so we volunteered as a break for guard duty - two hours on and four hours off - which was much easier.
My unrelated but subsequent posting to a salvage and repair unit was in Kent. This was a compassionate posting due to the illness of my mother, which led to my being billeted at home and travelling on a camp bike. One of my family obligations was to have a hot meal of rationed food ready for me any evening on my return from duty. However my movements were erratic, being dictated by the repair work on aircraft anywhere in Kent, which often lasted several days. On these occasions we lived mainly on hay-box meals. I had one break due to being sent to an isolation hospital with german measles.
At this time doodle bugs were constantly arriving. For shelter I once dived under a petrol bowser, which was not exactly intelligent, but there was little time to think! So in a way it was a relief to find myself being kitted out for an unknown overseas posting. In the event, after a three week tropp ship journey, including several days of horrible sea sickness, I arrived in India for a posting 300 miles south wesdt of Calcutta at a sdtaging post in the Bengal jungle. This was a complete change in life.
Boredom was the chief problem. To counter this I became mis-employed as a Motor Transport fitter/driver. This meant I had a gharrie to drive, which was a real luxury because it was relatively dust free. Never the less I had to visit a hospital in Calcutta with infected ears and impetigo. Following this I had a period of convalesence in the Himalayas with a return journey via Agra - where I missed a connection and so was able to visit the Taj Mahal. My final flink, early in 1946, was to collect, with a colleague, a radar truck from Bombay and deliver it via Delhi to Calcutta. It was a week's journey of some 1500 miles styled as a single vehicle convoy, being serviced all found by Western Oriental Gentlemen. This included their rations which consisted mainly of rice and stew which did not impress us - but the journey did. It was mainly single tarmac roads with a bullock cart dust track on either side. The bridges were not really meant for heavy vehicles. Driving over the sleepers of a railway bridge was sometimes the alternative, especially when pontoons were not up to the job. On arrival at camp I was told to pack my belongings because my discharge papers had arrived. I was flown to Bighty with three refuelling stops. What a sudden change on arrival after the tropics to find a very cold English winter. Thus ended my war.
In retrospect the wartime experiences, whilst at times severely harsh and tiring, hastened my preparation towards becoming a self-sufficient person as already started by school discipline and the ethos of the Boy Scouts. Certainly there were a few lighter moments and perks when in uniform. On off duty times in the UK we could visit cinemas, dance halls and pubs; perks included postage paid letter forms, usually censored, free bus travel and an occasional furrlough or 36 hour pass; the use of service men's clubs such as TocH, Salvation Army, YMCA and WVS. One Christmas time with two others I was invited into the home of a large family of WVS girls whose boy friends were overseas - that was a very pleasant and totally unexpected surprise - which led to a pen friendship for the duration of the war.
However there was no real let up from the mental pressures of the times - the blackouts and bombing.
On returning to civvy street I was able to join a tennis club and swimming club."
Norfolk and International
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Denzil Goddard
a resident of Leigh Old Vicarage wanted to record his wartime memories.
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1937 - 1945
"I worked at Harper House, a boarding house for Sherborne School, as a sewing maid with Mr Tindall as House Master. In the 1920s he asked me to join him as House Matron at West Downs Preparatory School, Winchester, the Preparatory School for Winchester College, where he had just been appointed Head Master.
Two of my friends went with him too. West Downs was a lovely school and I enjoyed my work there. I used to come home during the holidays or sometimes went on holiday with the Tindalls to the Isle of Wight or Newquay.
When the war came we were worried about the boys.
Some of my favourite Old Boys were Peter Scott who as a boy used to come and ask.
"May can I borrow your watch?" He was always drawing as a young boy but didn't have a watch. He used to draw wildlife in the grounds during his lunch hour. We also had Angus Ogilvy and his brother. Their parents gave me a clock for looking after them so well!
Southampton was bombed and we always had bombers flying overhead. Some of the parents were worried too so Mr Tindall started looking for a safe place to move the school to. We took over Glenapp Castle in Ayrshire in South West Scotland and soon the boys started arriving. All went well at first. Their parents managed to send supplies of most things they needed and there was always something for us too. Then things changed. We found we were on the flight path for Ireland and Mr Tindall started to get worried again.
I went home for the summer holidays. It was a long train journey. I used to have a break in London and go and stay with Aunt Louisa and Uncle Zeb at Finsbury Park. Uncle Zeb was an Austrian Pastry Cook but he was interred in the Alexandra Palace in the First World War in case he was a spy! Aunt used to be allowed to visit him on Sundays. After the war they changed their name back to her maiden name, from Reinthler to Hunt, in case the same thing happened again!
I was crossing Waterloo Bridge one afternoon when there was an air raid and had to go to the nearest shelter. Some time afterwards Uncle Zeb's house was bombed and most of their road. They were re-housed close by. On my way back to Scotland Mother, Louisa's older sister, used to send up a few supplies from the country -eggs, fruit and jam- and I used to drop them off.
When we got back to Scotland we had a shock. The army had taken over Glenapp castle and with less than 48 hours before the boys were due back we had to start searching for another home for the school.
Mr Tindall spent most of the next day with the army who tried to find somewhere for the boys. Then at the last minute we learnt Blair Castle, near Blair Atholl village, in Perthshire was being made available for us. Some of us went on to the castle while others waited to collect the boys as they arrived back and see they were sent on to Blair Atholl. There hadn't been time to tell them to go to Blair Atholl. It was a lovely place to stay. It had been an auxillary hospital in the First World War but was the family home of the Duke of Atholl. The Duke was the only person allowed to keep a private army and we often saw his Atholl Highlanders. While we were there the Duke died and we watched the Highlanders parade and pipe the coffin from the house to the church. We watched from the upper windows. The family made us very welcome and we had few shortages. The estate was large and the remaining keepers kept us well supplied with food.
The boys were very careful in the castle and I don't remember any breakages but they all came from well off homes so were used to such places.
In May 1945 I had a phonecall from Dorset to say Mother was seriously ill so I packed up and caught the first train home. She died soon after I got there and I stayed home to look after father and never returned to Scotland. At home we had rationing but we had a large garden and two allotments. My brother was a thatcher and got a special petrol allowance so he could carry on working. He often came home with something for the table. My Uncle was a keeper in Honeycombe Wood so he sometimes gave us things too. He kept pigs and built a smoke house near the house. He used oak shavings and smoked the joints and hams so we often had meat too. "
Dorset, Scotland, London
1939 - 1945
"I was in London for the whole of the war. I lived four miles away near Wandsworth Common. I was a secretary . When my boss was called up - he was too young to be exempt - I ran the whole office. The business was Douglas Pectin, a subsidiary of the Grape Nut Company. We were importers of pectin. I used to go up to London on the tube - when it was working. Sometimes I had to hitch a lift on the back of a lorry. I have sat on the back on a pile of vegetables! You just didn't think about having a day off. I was supposed to start work at 8.30 but rarely got there on time and it was often 9pm before I got home. There were pot holes and bomb craters in the roads and piles of rubble. Transport often broke down and we had to walk and sometimes when the sirens went and you were on an underground train they stopped too and you had to get off and walk between the rails to the next station!
Every night at home the bombers would come over Wandsworth Common. You could time them. Mother and Father used to go to the shelter but I used to stay with the Warden. The planes used to go over Wandsworth Common and Balham into the city - night after night after night. I used to see them bringing people out of the rubble in the morning. We all did what we could."
London
1939 - 1945
"The family had been there over 200 years. It was a mixed farm so we had everything we wanted - pork, eggs, milk, butter, cheese and vegetables. No one had served in the forces as they had reserved occupations although my father was a member of the Home Guard. They used to meet in a hut in a sand pit but there was usually nothing for them to do. I stayed with my aunt in Winchester for two years. We had a lot of troop movements leading up to D Day. I remember the troops marching on the roads too. She had American soldiers billetted with her. We used to hear our bombers going out on raids. They went overhead both at the farm and at Winchester. Sometimes we saw them coming back with vapour trails behind some of them who just made it home.
At the farm I remember hearing the empty cartridge cases raining down on the galvanised roofs of the farm buildings and the noise it made. We weren't really short of anything. We never wasted anything in any case so it was nothing new to us."
Eastleigh, near Winchester
1939 - 1945
"Margaret Jessie Young ATS Southern Command no W/252589
"I wasn't going to be left alone in the village, all my friends were off to the war so I might as well. The village was in Leicestershire - hardly any cars about in the 1940's. Looking back now the village was idyllic, everyone knew everyone else and looked out for one another. When the church bell tolled everyone knew who had died - so many tolls for a man, so many for a woman and so many for a child. Of course there was chapel three times on a Sunday - where I learned to spell Congregational and got my finger stuck in a knot hole during the sermon! Family and neighbours brought a taste of their baking and cakes to share and on winter days Aunt Polly would tap, tap, tap up the Entry if snow was lying, with her pattens on, carrying a steaming jug of soup. It was good to grow up there.
As I said I wasn't being left behind so on the bus to Leicester and volunteers for the Navy (No - they only wanted Commander's daughters then), the Air Force (No, I didn't want to be a cook), the Army - yes!
I could already drive after working for the Co-op milk round in the worst of a winter and delivering milk, which was then rationed, to people in three villages. I could certainly drive being taught by the Dairy Manager, Ernie Wilkinson, on the light Ford lorry. All I was required to learn was map reading and how to maintain the vehicle. When I returned home and told my mother, she began to cry. She was ironing and I shall always remember and I wondered why the tears.
I was called up and went to the Barracks at Wigston, only a stone's throw from home. I was issued with khaki issue, had various inoculations, began drill or square bashing after that, and there was more to come when I was sent to Camberley in Surrey. I never felt so fit in my life.
Camberley was good; drill, car maintenance all being taught and being with ladies ( all well off) in the FANYs - First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. I never saw the lot I was with doing any First Aid, just good drivers, teachers and ride motor bike now and again with lengths of bloomers showing!
After being taught how to do the daily maintenance on a vehicle, how to read a map with headlights half-shaded, I was posted to Roche Court, Farnham, Hants, driving lorries day and night.
Next I was sent to Salisbury to Longford castle, billeted at the Moat, Britford. We drivers, leather straps over the top of our caps and the wheel symbol stitched on the bottom of our sleeves, we were the elite of Longford. We were called upon to drive top ranking Officers in big cars, Ford USs, Humber Snipes. Then on lighter duty to ferry girls from the Moat to Longford in the small covered PU's. On one drive the steering went and I careered along the boulders down Longford Castle drive. I was on a charge the next day but I can't remember the outcome as D Day was approaching and life was hectic. I did doze off when driving the Medical Officer, who took over the wheel and ordered three days rest!
We drove everywhere, in Dorset mainly and on Salisbury Plain, down to Weymouth where part of the Mulberry Harbour was being built. Across to the Isle of Wight - that was work on the Pluto pipeline ready for D Day but we didn't know that then. We collected Intelligence men from London at Winchester station and took them along the coast to Weymouth mainly. Very often I used to go to Wilton House and while he was in at a meeting I dare not get out of the car. I also remember when I went to Studland where men were laying mines in the bay. I was desperate for a wee. I thought I was in an area of woodland but later learnt that there was camouflage and some of the dummy trees had bodies inside! That side of things was a problem for a woman in security areas. As D Day approached our driving became less. I remember many boats along the Solent then and one day the drone of planes towing gliders flying quite low that flew over the camp.
On my so called day off I used to drive a very handsome staff sergeant to Bournemouth. He was in charge of finance for the whole camp. He used to call at houses where army personnel lodged to pay for accomodation, then on to Bournemouth to collect maybe cleaning etc and we always went to Bobby's for refreshments, then walk along the cliff top piled high with barbed wire before returning to Salisbury. I fell hook, line and sinker for him. We were married on 12 August 1944 at the Enderby Congregational Church. Somehow my mother provided lunch which was hard on rations at that time. My family was teatotal and a non smoking one yet I always remember the dishes of scented cigarettes my father provided! We had special permission to travel to Matlock for a few days and as we waited on the platfor loads of soldiers passed by with the announcement being made that the train was not for the use of the public - however we made it.
Before D Day I drove Lady Pamela Digby. Only myself and one other were allowed to drive her as we dove FAST [ Winston Churchill's daughter] There were more tanks on the road around Dorset than cars. It was a very happy time and I kept in touch with Lady Pamela until her death in a home in Dorchester.
Margaret has a newspaper cuttings about Wilton House's crucial D Day role that reads
"The planning for Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944, took place at Wilton House . . . Wilton House was requisitioned as the headquarters of Southern Command in June 1940. The 15th Earl and Countess of Pembroke remained in residence while the top secret planning for D Day was co-ordinated in the famous Double Cube Room. . . . During the planning stages of the operation the house was visited by Churchill, Eisenhower, General de Gaulle and King George V. However it was all top secret so little evidence remains" Debbie Evans, the Tourism Manager at Wilton House added.
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England
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Margaret Aldridge
was born in 1924 and lived in the village of Enderby, Leicestershire, five miles south west of Leicester city and now pincered by the M1 and M69. Margaret recalls the village was dominated by the granite quarry and the shoe and hosiery factories.
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1939 - 1945
Bill Duggan's story touched the hearts of everyone at the Yetminster Memories Tea Party
"I was an orphan in Enfield. I was sent to St Joseph's Home. Oliver Twist was lucky! We only had jam on our slice of bread on Sundays. It was a Catholic orpahange run by the Sisters of Charity. I shall never forget it. They seemed all sweetness and kindness until they closed the doors. When the air raid sirens went we all had to rush down to the Air Raid shelter in the cellar. We had to kneel down and pray. The sisters would pray to sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph - and then an Incendiary bomb dropped in the garden of the orphanage! We used to go to school at St George's Enfield, and had to walk three miles there and three miles back. It was a Catholic school. It was nothing for us to look up and see dogfights - aircraft chasing one another - and us picking up shrapnel that had dropped.
I remember the black out. The Air Raid Warden used to come round and inspect. All the windows in the school were taped except for one that wasn't. I used to try and count all the windows and always picked out the one that wasn't. They were trying years. I remember playing in the playground when we had to rush to the shelter. There was one boy who had something wrong with a leg and he couldn't run as fast as the rest of us. He used to lie down in the playground. I saw him on his own. No one was allowed to go and help him and the Sisters didn't bother either.
I saw doodlebugs coming. There was a terrific noise and then the engine would cut out. You knew they could drop just like that when the engine stopped but sometimes they would wing on a bit further before they exploded. It was daylight and we used to see them coming. I found it horrifying even as a kid. When you heard the noise of the engine you thought you would be ok - then the noise stopped and you would think they had landed on someone else. Hundreds of planes came over. I saw hundreds of squadrons, squadrons and squadrons of planes went over. As a kid you used to look up and count them 44, 45 up to 50.
We had various benefactors at the orphanage who used to come and give the occasional party. I used to think "we're getting cake!" You had to eat fast whatever was put in front of you. There was always another kid waiting in the wings to take it off of you. You weren't alone though. There were 100 other kids. Small children were in Holy Angels, next St Michaels, older St Vincents and the oldest of us in St Josephs house. The orphanage was Sisters of Charity and the Roman Catholic school Sisters of Nazareth. They appeared so angellic but behind locked doors they weren't at all. If they pointed at you you knew you were in for a hiding. We got the ruler on the back of the hands and we had to stand with our hands on our heads. I remember looking out from the cellar at the poor boy in the playground during a raid with my hands on my head."
Bill left Enfield and was sent to an Agricultural College in Gloucester - run by brothers - the Selenians.
They had 1000s of acres of land. We kept poultry and pigs. I went as a gardener. I loved every minute off it. From the regime we were under at the orphanage it was so different. It was the first time in my life that anyone had put an arm round me. When I got there one of the brothers put his hand out and I shrank away. It had always meant someone was going to hit me. The brother said no he wanted to say welcome. We have a reunion in Gloucester.
My childhood before that was cane, strap and clout!"
Enfield, Middlesex and Gloucester
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Bill Duggan
Bill Duggan entertaining at a Make do and Mend event was interviewed at Crafty Times Memories Tea Party in February 2010. His tragic story touched so many hearts
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1939 - 1945
"I came from Norfolk. I was up at Oxford when war broke out. We were miles away from the war. Hitler was going to make it his headquarters so the German aircraft were not allowed to bomb it. I finished my finals on the Friday and on the Monday took over my Father's school for six weeks. There were 48 mixed infants there at St Albans. There were quite a lot of air raid warnings. The planes were heading for Hatfield and the aircraft factories. We had a wartime shelter and got used to teaching underground. It was very difficult. We had tilley lamps and no heating and took our own stools down with us. There was one corridor that ran into another, only one small loo and - no food! If parents could not collect their children because the All Clear had not sounded they had to stay with us, often until 6.30pm until it was safe to collect them. It was difficult to keep them amused because we didn't have any books or paper with us so we did spelling tests, times tables and sang songs - anything we knew by heart - I remember Cherry Ripe and Going to Strawberry Fair. As an education it really was a blank.
I was very lucky we already knew about Make do and Mend! There was an excellent cook at the Junior School. I was lucky. I avoided hardships that way. When I went to the High School in Nottingham we were very lucky - there were no bombs. The army occupied half of the school. We had to be very economical with paper and re-use every bit. This was while the army was being very lavish!
I do remember at Nottingham I had to go down to town for lunch and all I ever had for lunch was sausages or fish cakes that had been kept warm for hours! We had the odd bomb drop near us because of Hatfield. I remember we had to take evacuees at St Albans and try to get them fitted in - they were always shrieking to go home but they were in a safe place.
I remember rationing. We used to get two pints of milk on a Monday and the milkman used to leave another two pints on a Tuesday for the week. I was new to catering and it gradually got worse. Fresh veg was difficult and there was no fish. We only had meat for two meals a week. There was spam - it looked pink and it tasted pink! We had horse meat and whale meat, powdered milk and powdered egg. Bread and potatoes were rationed too after the war. I remember the Woolton Loaf - it had a lot of potato flour in it because wheat was in short supply.
There were no bananas - children didn't know what they were. If you knew a shopkeeper you got extras! - a little something wrapped up and slipped into your shopping bag!
I remember having to cycle six miles to work. I remember boyfriends used to regularly disappear - they got called up. You had just got to know them and then they were gone. Some didn't come back.
Clothes - well it was Make do and Mend. I remember curtains being made into a skirt. Stockings disappeared so we wore ankle socks a lot. I remember I made a jumper once - well it was rather a nice waistcoat really out of 12 cards of mending wool - that wasn't rationed!
Furniture was rationed too! We were rationed for sheets. It was very difficult setting up home. There was a two years wait for a vacuum cleamer. I remember spending a lot of money at a fairground trying to win some saucepans - I didn't though. They were probably stuck down. You just couldn't get new saucepans. A lot of old ones were gathered for the war effort and people got out their old cast iron ones again. They were too heavy for camping stoves.
There was Utility Furniture too - it lasted well and wasn't bad in design - it was vaguely Scandinavian.
Weather during the war wasn't bad - but we weren't allowed to go anywhere! After the war we had some really bad winters.
I remember at St Albans seeing the lights in the sky when London was bombed."
Oxford
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Vicky Cornford
retired to Yetminster, Dorset and was interviewed at a Memories Tea Party at CraftyTimes Tea Room in the village who hosted the event. Vicky enjoyed her afternoon " I haven't talked about those days for years. It is all coming back to me now!"
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1939 - 1945
"I was born in Wiltshire but Mother died and I went to live with an Aunt in London. My Dad lived on the Woburn Estate and I remember we went down to stay there sometimes to get a good night's sleep from the Blitz in London. He used to give us real eggs - we were used to powdered egg in London during the war. I do remember a thing called Wootton Pie but I can't remember how it was made during the war.
In London I started out having been put into a factory 'Standard Telephones and Cables' making parts for aircraft etc. One day on the radio Lord Haw Haw said they would bomb the factory - and they did. One bomb fell between our building and the wood shed and the whole of our side wall was taken out - the clock stopped at 5 to 8am and about 50 people were killed who were going upstairs to the Offices above. It was my chance to leave there as they had to find room for the day and the night shift and there was no blackout any longer on the bombed wall. I joined the NAFFI. We had our problems but on the whole it was alright. We had seven beds in a Nissan Hut and crickets in the wall! They used to wake us up at night. We had a double oven fire in the kitchen which had to be lit early each morning before anyone could have a cup of tea. The water had to be boiled there.
My other memories are of my cousin who sent us tea from India. My brother was in the navy but fortunately he came home safely. My Dad was in the Home Guard. I have so many memories - so many of my friends were killed. I used to pick up bits of shrapnel on the way home in the morning after spending all night in a public air raid shelter under the local Almshouse. I remember so many children being evacuated to the country for safety. We had two and a half pints of milk a week for the two of us at home but when I went into the NAFFI my Aunt only got half a pint every other day. I remember my Uncle was awarded the MBE but he would never say why. He had won the Military Medal in the 1914 war as well.
I remember gas masks, barrage balloons and blackout curtains. We had a table shelter. It took up nearly all of our big kitchen space! I remember our Ration Books - we had coupons or points for everything you wanted to buy.
My cousin was killed in the Berlin airlift. His brother was killed on an oil tanker. I remember being confirmed in St. Paul's Cathedral after it was bombed and having tea in a Lyon's Corner House afterwards. VE Day was also my birthday. I was in Fleet Street - you couldn't move it was so packed with people!"
London and South East
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Eileen Harris
now resides at St Johns Almshouse, Sherborne but lived at Bradford Abbas for 38 years.
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1939 - 1945
"I came from Surrey but now live in St Johns Almshouse, Sherborne, Dorset. At 14 I went into service but at 20 I was called up for war work and worked in a factory - making things for guns. I stayed at home as I lived close by and was picked up for work. We lived in the country in a village called Frimley Green - all fields, farms and allotments. I lived with grandparents on both sides of us! We were quite well off for food - one grandmother used to sit and talk about rationing in the First War and go back even further to how very short of food they were in the Boer War. Things were much worse then. My father was in the Queens Regiment and was away at war from 1914. He served until his time was up. During the school holidays I used to walk to see relations - the only way to get there. My uncles all had allotments and one grandfather was a gardener. He used to keep his kitchen garden for growing fruit and had allotments. I remember doing a lot of knitting and sewing in the war."
Surrey
1939 - 1945
"I was in Central London during the war. I was nursing - in training when war broke out. I was on night duty when Great Ormond Street Hospital was bombed in the blitz. Most of the teaching hospitals had been evacuated to base hospitals in the country. None closed but bed numbers fluctuated. It was a very highly organised system evacuating patients every morning. As soon as they could be moved they were moved out to base hospitals. Green Line coaches were commandeered as convoys of ambulances. Every morning the convoys left. It was a very organised system every morning and then on the return journey patients were brought back who had recovered from operations. During the blitz it was horrendous. I remember a particular night when I was on night duty on the fifth floor. The sirens went and we wheeled the beds and cots - and remember we had very sick babies and children - out into the corridor as it was considered the safest place away from glass and arc lights. That night I shall never forget as long as I live. Crump, crump, crump we heard followed by bounces on the roof - a very large bomb had gone down the main lift shaft. All the main services were knocked out. We still wore a Victorian style uniform - long capes, gas masks on shoulder and each of us had to carry a baby wrapped in a blanket and their huge baby gas masks packed in large cardboard boxes. We had to carry everything down into the basemet lit only by a small pen torch. It was regarded as the safest place. It was a very big hospital and a tall building so an easy target. As soon as we got to the basement the water started to rise until it was a huge flood several feet deep. Everything from the kitchen was floating. I remember seeing babies bottles, a pound of sausages, childrens green ration books - they all floated by. Firemen from the ak-ak factory opposite came to rescue us. I don't know how they did it. They piggybacked us up from the basement still carrying our baby patients and all our equipment and put us down on the ground floor. We all gathered in the atrium of the hospital and assembled. Then we went out in single file across the forecourt and across the road to the Hospital for Nervous Diseases. It was like treading on an ice rink. Every bit of glass from our hospital had been blown out. It was treacherous to walk on, especially carrying so much and our precious babies. We also had our white starched bonnets - we were a sitting target. It was pitch dark and a black out. We never came out until 6am/7am and then went into the Out Patients Department and sat on the floor. We were all 18 years of age. We were given a boiled egg each for breakfast.
Wartime London was difficult, especially in September 1940 at the height of the blitz. German bombers came up the Thames in the late afternoon to bomb the East End. I remember it always smelt like burnt toast afterwards. I shall never forget it. Mother was home on the outskirts of Reading and Father was at The Front for the second time in his life as he had served in the First War.
Our patients had special dried milk and special juices because of course they did not need a meat ration so their needs were substituted. There were no oranges so rose-hip sysrup was substituted. Rationing didn't stop when the war stopped - not until 1953, the last being meat - not until after the Coronation. Food was shorter after the war, especially bread and potatoes that had not been rationed before. We had to feed the people of Europe. I started nursing six months before war broke out and I was a Senior Sister by the end of the war.
Our Nurses Uniform altered during the war to save material. Our Nurses dresses had been 12 inches above the ground and this went up to 14 inches. The dresses had taken six and a half yards of material to make! They took the straps off of our aprons and our bibs were fixed with safety pins. Caps changed in style too. Gradually our long sleeves became short sleeves. Our long full capes became short capes. The problem was getting everything starched. It was difficult to get enough starch. We had at least one clean apron a day. We had to buy our own uniform. We went to the hospital tailors to get measured. Mother said it was like starting at boarding school all over again! In our second year we were given enough material to make our uniform. We were paid £15 a year, in the second year £20 and in the third £30. It was quite expensive to go into nursing before the Health Service. If you didn't like it and left you had to pay them back. You had to supply your own safety pins too. You had to pay for breakages; six pence (6d) for a broken thermometer. It was very disciplined. We were not allowed out after 10pm. Only in recent years have women become emancipated. We were all under 21 [ 21 then being the coming of age] so Matron was responsible for all of us. It was a great responsibility."
Central London
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Mary Hatt
Mary Hatt was interviewed at the St Johns Almshouse Memories Tea Party where she has recently retired to after a lifetime career in nursing.
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Do you remember having to make do and mend? Please submit your experiences.