ĂŰŃż´«Ă˝

Is that you banging about, Mary?

My mother called this up to me late one evening, only to discover that it wasn’t me this time; it was the usual bangs and thumps associated with an air raid …

I was ten when the war started. I remember listening apprehensively to talk about a “crisis”, then feeling disappointed when I heard that there wasn’t going to be a war after all. I remember crying because my mother wouldn’t let me be evacuated. “You wouldn’t like it — for the first night you’ll have to rough it” which sounded exciting, and only made me want to all the more.

However we managed to get out of London and into Hertfordshire, thus being in the position of having evacuees — both official and unofficial — coming to live with us. Friends from London were only too pleased to catch the “workman’s” early train to London each morning rather than spend a night in the blitz. Two relatives turned up at our door: “We haven’t taken our clothes off for a fortnight”. When our house was full, we found room for them with neighbours.

We didn’t escape the raids entirely. There was a siren situated next door, pointing straight at our bedroom window. The Warning seemed to go regularly each evening just at bedtime. We resignedly brought down our pillows to a large mattress on the kitchen floor. My younger sister shared a narrow chairbed with our evacuee, one each end, so that the evacuee’s feet reached my sister’s pillow; she played happily with them, saying they were her babies.

Later we brought beds down to the lounge, where I slept very comfortably on the sofa.

I remember windows sticky and smeary or covered with netting. There was a cartoon in the buses, of a passenger trying to pull the netting off and being reprimanded:

“I trust you’ll pardon my correction,
That stuff is there for your protection.”

Some wag answered:

“Thank you for your information,
I want to see the blinking station”.

Then there was Lady Macbeth in her dressing gown, rubbing her hands. “She’s just had her soap coupons”.

Which reminds me of the itchy rash. No one seemed quite sure, but the suggestion was that it was vitamin deficiency, and we applied vile-smelling Sulphur Ointment. Eventually we had to admit that we had scabies. It was never decided whether our evacuee caught it from us, or we from her. She was as clean as we were, but she did have to mix with undesirables at school.

It was cured by being “painted” all over with some even more evil-smelling substance.

I remember barrage balloons, sandbags, sugar from Barbados, saccharines in tea and custard, rabbit or whalemeat for dinner, using my own “personal points” (sweet coupons), taking my gas mask everywhere — “Hitler will send no warning, so always carry your gas mask” — it filled half my weekend suitcase.

I could go on and on.

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