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Butter and bombers over Dudley

I was just thirteen years old when I first realised that the outbreak of war was almost a certainty. For some time, air raid shelters had been appearing in the town of Dudley, where I lived, and everyone had been issued with a gas mask, but it was when my mother bought yards of black material with which to make blackout curtains, that the fact really went home. I couldn't see her doing all that sewing without good reason. When war was finally declared on Germany, I asked my mother what would happen next? She replied "nothing much, for a while yet" so we carried on with our lives much as usual. A favourite uncle of mine.joined the army and was very soon sent to France. Before he went I asked him if there was anything particular he would like me to send him while there. He replied "Plenty of letters and some chocolate if you can spare the coupons" so that is what I sent. Sadly he was killed during the evacuation of Dunkirk. Gradually, lots of things that we'd always taken for granted became in short supply and we learnt to queue. Petrol rationing came into force and my father decided to take our car off the road. It was stored in the garage with its tyres removed and bricks in their place for the duration. Food rationing tested my mother’s cooking skills and I remember she used to make a very tasty pie with potatoes, onions and Marmite, but no meat. I became much in demand to cut bread and butter, as I used less butter in the operation than anyone else. We were exhorted to ‘Dig for Victory’ and produce our own food. My grandfather even brought some chickens and housed them in a wire pen in the garden, much to the delight of his two dogs who spent hours watching them. He used to preserve the surplus eggs in a solution of Isinglass. Some people used to coat each egg with Vaseline, but it was a very laborious job. ‘Make do and mend’ was the order of the day and I remember my aunt making a lovely tablecloth from calico flour bags which she joined together with strips of crochet work. Parachute silk became much in demand as it made into lovely underwear and saved on clothing coupons, once clothes rationing came into force.
Dishcloth cotton was useful for knitting into gloves and wasn't rationed

At school, a large part of the playing fields had been used on which to build air raid shelters and we spent many occasions practising our air raid drill. We also had to carry our outdoor coats with us wherever we went during the day, together with our gas masks. These had been issued, each with its own cardboard carrying box, but it wasn't long before fancy gas mask cases appeared in the shops and there was some rivalry at school as to whose was the best. We also had our lunch time shortened by half an hour to enable us to leave school earlier in the afternoon and hopefully arrive home before it was dark. Later on, the school hours were shortened even more and we had to drop on of the subjects we were studying for school certificate. At that time, it had become the rage among young ladies, with boyfriends in the forces, to wear one of their cap badges pinned to their coat or dress. One or two of the senior girls managed this, to the great envy of everyone else. I remember feeling immensely proud when one of the boys from the grammar school, who was in the army cadet corps, gave me his badge to wear and I was able to flaunt it at school.

My father had decided, after taking advice, that one room in our house would provide us with adequate shelter in the event of an air raid and would be a lot warmer than one built in the garden. At that time, we had both a scullery and breakfast room and it was the latter that was in the best place. As my mother had foretold , nothing much happened at home for the first months of the war but once Spring and the lighter nights arrived, things altered dramatically and we had our first air raid. The sirens sounded in the middle of the night so my parents and I rose and went downstairs to our breakfast room shelter. We were very fortunate in Dudley in that we had few bombs but we were on the flight path to Birmingham and had all the noise. Very soon the raids became a frequent occurrence, so my father decided we would have far more rest if we bedded down in our 'shelter'. At that time we slept on feather mattresses so these were brought downstairs and laid out on the floor of the breakfast room, together with some blankets. During the day, they were rolled up and put out of sight. At least we managed some rest and were warm. I remember one particularly bad night when the noise had finally died down and we were trying to get some sleep, it seemed to start up again but more in the distance. After a while, my father said "My word, somewhere's catching it tonight!" Whereupon my mother replied "Don't be silly it's my stomach rumbling." The air raids eventually died down, after the Battle of Britain and we were able to return to our beds upstairs.

It was during the time of the raids, that a group of soldiers arrived in the town and took up residence in an old picture house. It transpired that they belonged to a Worcestershire regiment and were taking a course at the local technical college. I was a girl guide, then, with a troop attached to a local chapel. The minister in charge wanted to do something for the soldiers so he arranged a social evening and asked all the guides to bring their parents . He then sent a general invitation to the soldiers in the hope that as many as possible would come, get into conversation with the people there and be invited to their homes for a cup of tea. It all worked very well for, by the end of the evening, we had four of the soldiers coming to tea the following Sunday. I remember them very well, they were all from London. They visited us frequently during their stay in Dudley, sometimes singly, other times in pairs and liked nothing better than to sit by the fire and talk about their families.

Fire watching became very important at this time. Every road had a fire watching rota and my father was very amused to find himself paired with two maiden ladies living some doors away. The proprieties had to be observed!. Nevertheless, it was a fine way of getting to know ones neighbours. Office blocks and factories etc. all needed to have someone there at night, in case of fire breaking out from incendiary bombs and the like.

It was some months after the departure of the soldiers that the Technical college began a course to train RAF personnel as wireless operators. All the householders in the vicinity of the college were asked if they had a spare bedroom and if so would they be willing to house one of the airmen for a period of sixteen weeks. My mother offered our spare room and very soon we had a visit from the billeting officer to ensure the room was adequate. It was and very soon our first airman arrived.
He was from Alloa, in fact most of them were Scottish. Fortunately, he had no pronounced accent but some of them we met needed an interpreter! He fitted into our household very well and became one of the family. I remember my mother, at one time, became very concerned when he started to go out with a girl whom she considered most unsuitable. Fortunately, for her peace of mind, the affair died away and very soon afterwards, the course came to an end and the men were moved on. The start of the new course brought us another airman, this time he came from Wales. :He had an unpronouncable christian name so we always called him "Bill". During his stay with us, my father had a long spell in hospital and Bill was most helpful in the garden and doing heavy jobs around the house for my mother. I wrote to both our airmen after they left but we eventually lost touch once the war was over.

As time went on, coal became increasingly difficult to get. I don't think it was ever rationed except for what the suppliers themselves did. There were regular power cuts to eke out coal supplies at the power stations but at least we knew when they were coming. My mother used to stock up on briquettes during the summer, these were made from a mixture of coal dust and cement and by using these and plenty of slack, we managed to keep warm.

Some months after the last RAF course was finished, the Technical College started a
2 year engineering course for officer cadets so our spare bedroom was once more in use. As he was with us for so long, Don really did become one of the family. We were very sorry to see him go at the end of the course but have kept in touch ever since.

I left school when I was sixteen and started work in the Civil Service. There was a shortage of nurses, then, so in my spare time I took a red cross nursing course. Together with some other girls, I worked two evenings a week at the local hospital. I think we all hoped we'd be soothing the brow of some wounded service man but it was mainly elderly patients we dealt with. At that time, the Civil Service allowed anyone willing to help in the country with the harvest, an extra two weeks holiday. Four of us from the office volunteered and we were sent to a camp at Welshpool. Every day we were ferried out by lorry to one of the farms and there we gathered potatoes. The tractor would dig them up and we followed with a bucket, each of us having our own line. The tractor driver went at a spanking rate and I learned all about backache. After a few days, we were moved to apple picking and developed some different aches as there were no dwarf trees about then. After the first week, we were able to enjoy the social life in the evening without falling asleep. We helped with the harvest for two more summers, both times we were near Evesham.

Looking back at the war years, what springs most readily to mind is the shortage of so many things and the abundance of tins of pilchards. They were a great standby when nothing else was available and I used to dread visitors coming to tea. Wrapping paper was almost non-existent so newspaper was used unless you'd remembered to take a bag with you. Fruit cakes were made with chopped up prunes, gravy browning and very little dried fruit but we learnt to take it all in our stride. It took a long time for things to return to normal. Rationing was still in force when I got married in 1950 but, at least, the butter ration was no problem, I could still spread it thinly!

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