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This story was submitted to the people war Website by a volunteer from Tiverton Museum of Mid Devon Life on behalf of J.M Bishop.

My neighbour’s eldest daughter was doing a school project on 2nd World War. Until I was asked to talk about my own experiences I realised it had all been bottled up for 43 years! I’d never talked it over with anyone.

We were all living in difficult times. Why talk about it to one another! There were slogans warning us “Careless talk costs lives” and “Be like Dad — keep Mum”. We took it to heart, so it just wasn’t done to complain in those far-off days. Mostly trying to keep up our own spirits, glad to laugh and talk of less serious matters. No therapy. No counselling available — just help yourself.

So I thought about my own young life in wartime and was amazed at the flood of memories crowding into my head.

Carrying gasmasks in a cardboard box with a cord to loop over a shoulder. Woe betide anyone appearing without it. Blackout and barrage balloons, so grey and graceful, seeming to dance lightly in the sky. Sweets rationed, as well as food. Paper in short supply; one of my school books tenth hand. Wailing sirens and broken nights and shouts of ‘Put that light OUT’ from tin-hatted A.R.P. wardens — more severe than today’s traffic wardens! Morrison & Anderson shelters.

Clothing Coupons, strictly enforced. No special clothes for ‘teenagers’ just smaller versions of adult wear. Shoes! Another problem. Did every woman in Britain wear five/five and a half shoes? Wooden soled shoes appeared — and disappeared. Nail polish vanished (I used varnish from my brother’s modelling kits). Women painted a line up the backs of their legs to simulate stocking seams. They wore trousers and ‘turbans’. Utility clothes replaced pretty hats and frocks for the duration. Sometimes old curtains were cut up to make skirts and blouses. ‘Make do and mend’ another well-known slogan. Hair worn in upswept styles, with ‘sausage’ curls. Fewer people wore hats, exception more formal occasions — weddings, Sunday church-going, though it had been customary for men and women to cover their heads, but the war changed many things. Railway stations had dim lighting and no signs of their location. On the roads, signposts had also vanished. There was no petrol for leisure use, very few vehicles on the road — a real heyday for young cyclists. Travel very restricted. ‘Is your journey really necessary?’.

With a much smaller population in the U.K. in the 1940s many men and women serving in the Armed Forces, law and order was strictly maintained. Of course there was a Black Market. We all knew, as many commodities were scarce, but penalties were severe if caught, be it petrol, foodstuffs or clothing coupons.

We listened to ‘the wireless’. Good news and bad read unemotionally by ��ѿ��ý announcers in clipped, precise tones. Comedy programmes to listen to. Allied anthems played on Sunday evenings. The arrival of U.S. Forces in great numbers.

It never crossed my mind that we or our allies would lose the war! Years of austerity lay ahead — but the fear and dread were past by V E Day in 1945, followed by V J Day later that summer.

Relief. Not jubilation. Just a huge feeling of relief. Peace.

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