蜜芽传媒

WARTIME MEMORIES

At home

I was born a couple of weeks after war was declared, on Sep. 30th. 1939, so all my earliest memories are of war-time.
We lived in a suburb of Oxford, and as a result my war was in fact much more privileged than many in the sense that we were never in any real danger. Of course we didn鈥檛 know that at the time and so, for my parents at least, they still experienced many of the fears and alarm that others would have been feeling in those years. Still, I have a few very vivid memories of the war years. And some of that alarm inevitably rubbed off on us kids 鈥� we knew that bad things were happening in the world, and that the 鈥淛erry鈥� were to be feared and hated.

I remember that although we had French windows that led straight out into the garden, we could never go out that way because they were banked up with sandbags in case of a bomb dropping outside. There was a sense that we had to keep something out. We had all the usual blackout and gas-masks that everyone had of course, and we had a Morrison table 鈥� a sturdy steel table in the living room, which was to protect us if bombs fell. When the siren sounded, usually during the night, we were all (my brother and I, and later, my little sister) bundled onto the springs under this table, all cushioned and cuddled up with eiderdowns and pillows. Our mother would join us, and Dad would crawl round the outside putting the special netting up all round. His last job was to put out the electric one-bar fire and come in too. Then I felt we were all safe.

The air-raid siren always had a very strange and special sound. Two notes that jarred a little against each other. My brother and I used to imitate the sound. He would take one note and I would take the other and we would sing or hum them together. For some reason this made our lips vibrate and tingle 鈥� something to do with the two frequencies. I was told that was why those particular notes were chosen. I don鈥檛 know if that鈥檚 true or not. It was a scary sound too, and we were always relieved when the 鈥淎ll clear鈥� went. It sounded happy and free in contrast.

We could tell the difference in the sound of 鈥榦ur鈥� and 鈥楯erry鈥� planes. One night we lay under the Morrison table and listened to wave after wave of enemy planes going over 鈥� for ages and ages. I can still hear that sound in my head now if I think of it. The growling drone of German bombers. My mother said that night, 鈥淭hey鈥檙e getting Coventry鈥�. She was right too.

For some reason Oxford was never bombed. Only one bomb ever dropped near us and that was in a field. Probably jettisoning a last bomb on the way home someone said. It was a wonder, thinking of it now, because there were big munitions factories in the next suburb to us, but the Germans never bombed them.

One day though our mother was frightened to see men coming down on parachutes into our street! They could be Germans. But it turned out they were Americans on an exercise.

Dad

You might wonder why my father was there when we all went into the Morrison shelter. His was an unusual war, and we were very lucky, unlike most children of the time, to have our father with us all through it.

When war broke out he was working in the post office in Oxford. At first this was a 鈥榬eserved鈥� job because the post office workers were seen to be essential in the war effort. One of his skills was knowing Morse code. It was needed in those days for sending telegrams. One day volunteers who knew Morse were asked for to teach the new Air Force recruits at a nearby aerodrome at Kidlington. My father and his friend, Ernie, volunteered and found themselves teaching Morse every day to young airmen destined for the skies. Not only did they have to teach Morse, but they were asked to teach other communication skills too. My father and Ernie used to read them up the night before, and teach them the next day!

The post office was soon taken off the reserved job list as more and more were needed for the forces, but my dad was by then needed to keep on teaching, so he stayed on the aerodrome, and could cycle home to us every night.

Later a directive went out that only armed forces personnel were allowed to work on aerodromes from then on, but the officer in charge of Kidlington said that Dad and his friend were too essential to let go, and so they stayed on till the end of the war as the only civilians at that airfield, teaching batch after batch of Air Force recruits.

Shopping and food

Although I was very young at the time I can remember rationing quite clearly. Mainly because it went on after the war and I would be sent out to the shops with our ration books and watch the shop-keepers put their blue pencil through where we鈥檇 had our ration for the week, or cut out the coupons. We had to queue, especially at the butcher鈥檚. There we would watch out for our letter to come up. Every week different letters of the alphabet were posted in the butcher shop鈥檚 window and when ours came up we could have offal. That meant liver, kidneys or heart. Nowadays children, and many adults too, turn up their noses at offal, but we were glad when our Offal Week came up because it was good to have a different taste and some extra meat.

At some point, later in the war or just after, some new foods came on the market. One of these was snoek, which was fish in a tin, a little like tuna. I don鈥檛 remember the taste of that. But I do remember the whale meat that suddenly appeared. It was rather like very dark and oily beef. We didn鈥檛 like the taste very much. I think we only had it a couple of times.

I remember the jam too. It was called plum jam I think, and we wondered what all the other jams that our mother and aunties told us about could taste like. We got rather bored with 鈥榩lum jam鈥�. Of course we could only have jam on our bread with no butter. If we wanted butter we couldn鈥檛 have jam. Also there were biscuits, but very little variety. Mum would entertain us by telling us about all the different kinds they鈥檇 had before the war.

We had the dried egg and the Spam that everybody seems to remember, and National Baby Milk or Food which my baby sister had. It came in a huge tin. My brother and I wondered how our mum knew we鈥檇 been at it when she came back from a quick trip to the shop. We didn鈥檛 realize we鈥檇 left the powder all over the floor! I think the slight sweetness of it attracted us.

Besides the rationed foods we were very fortunate to have a dad who ran an allotment as well as digging our long garden. So we had plenty of fresh vegetables, and soft fruits in season.

In hospital

I had 3 spells in hospital during the war, but the only one where the war made a difference was when I went into the Radcliffe to have my tonsils out. The children鈥檚 ward I was in had a glass roof. Maybe it was a conservatory or something at one time. Anyway I remember lying looking up at this roof and it was completely black because of the blackout. This somehow added to the scariness of being in a strange place as a four year old. No parents were allowed in hospitals at that time.

The end of the war

It was great when Victory was declared! There was a huge bonfire lit in our street which was a cul-de-sac with plenty of space at the end. My father found an old umbrella and dipping it in the flames ran round and round the fire waving it so that sparks came off it. Everybody gathered round the fire with happy faces. We children knew it was the best thing that had happened. We too felt the tremendous relief that there was no more war.

Later we were taken up to the main road to see 鈥榯he lights鈥�. The street lights were on for the first time in our young lives. We looked in amazement and wonder at the long line of lights stretching away into the distance.

I also remember the end of sweet rationing. We couldn鈥檛 believe that all we needed now when we went to the sweet shop was money. And we could buy as many sweets as our money would allow! By then I was about 10 years old. We walked into the local sweet shop, G.H.Williams on the main road, feeling very strange. (That sweet shop is still there, now a toy and bicycle shop, and when I visited it a couple of years ago, the man who served us our first off-ration sweets was still there).

After effects

For a while after the war I would have a recurring nightmare that helmeted and booted German soldiers were marching down our long garden and straight through the French doors. But that went, and years later at school I learnt German as a third language. When I was 15 the school arranged an exchange with a school in Ulm, South Germany. I made firm friends with my exchange girl. She came to Oxford and stayed with us. She grew up to be an English teacher and came many times to England with or without her pupils, while I had another holiday in Germany and then worked there for a year in the late 60s. And 2 years ago my husband and I had a wonderful holiday with her and her husband at their home in Stuttgart. What an enlightened move on the part of our German language teacher and her counterpart in Ulm that was!

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