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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Roger Marsh of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Muriel Brown and has been added to the site with the author’s permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

The Morning After — Part 2
By
Muriel Brown

Queues were a part of life. My mother encouraged me to join a queue if I saw one on the way home from school, even if I didn't know what was being sold at the front of it! It might be oranges or stockings (not nylon - these arrived with the G.I.'s), and one day I was one of the chosen six people in the queue to get a chance to buy some Bally shoes from Switzerland. That was an unbelievable luxury as they were well made. A shoe shop, whose windows were entirely blacked out, except for a small square in the middle, had displayed a sample of these delectable shoes for a week, and there was a notice saying that six pairs only were available at a certain time on Saturday next. It had been a snowy week and comparatively, few people had passed the window that week, so, by getting up early and being the third in the queue, I got to try the shoes on. They were too small! The disappointment was intense.

Years later, the first salary I earned went entirely on high heeled shoes to make up for the frumpy shoes I had had to wear throughout my teens until they became more plentiful and styles were more attractive.
There was little choice, but girls did not know what they were missing.

The summer term of 1944 was the last summer without major exams for me and my particular friends, Nancy and Jean, and we were not taking school life very seriously. We scorned those swats who came top, but, on the other hand, did not want to be counted as no-hopers like those at the lower end of the marks list, so our school reports usually suggested that we could do better and needed to pull our socks up before the following School Certificate year.

As the term neared its end, the headmistress asked for volunteers to help the hard-pressed farmers. When we heard that the farms involved were in Lincolnshire some sixty miles away, but on another planet, we put our names down, only to discover that if the school let us go during the last week of term, we had to give up a week of our own holidays.

We could not back down, so we met at the end of May 1944 with about twenty fellow volunteers and two teachers, and took a train to Lincoln. From there we had an army lorry to take us to what had been a previously deserted farm house. On first sight, it seemed to be in a quiet corner on the edge of a small village in a very boring landscape, but, when night descended, things were very different. The noise of aircraft engines revving and taking off on bombing raids over Europe drowned the whispering night noises and it didn't take much to discover that we were in a triangle of fields, surrounded by the most active bomber bases in Britain.

Our official employer was the Lincoln and Kesteven War Agricultural Board, who had the authority to tell the farmers what crops to grow and in which fields they should be grown, but, shortage of men had made the farmers desperate for more hands to do the labour intensive jobs, so they enrolled the help of schoolchildren and prisoners, including Italian prisoners of war who seemed relieved that the fighting was passing them by. Many of them had been agricultural workers at home in Italy and, on our farm, they were good workers with a calm way with the horses which had been brought back into service as there was little petrol for tractors.

Our particular job was singling sugar beet on hands and knees, a task done in a few hours today by machinery, but we had to crawl up and down the fields, pieces of used tyres bound to our knees, taking out one green shoot in every group of three, to allow the other leaves to develop. The fields were longer than any in our own hilly part of Derbyshire and, on wet days our fingers were numb. When the beet was fully grown, it was taken to the sugar beet refining factory in Newark and the resulting sugar arrived at the grocer's ready to be weighed into two ounce portions and exchanged for ration coupons. Imports of sugar were almost non existent at that stage in the war, and many lives had been lost by merchant shipping sinking, so it was impressed on us that the beet grown in Lincolnshire was an important substitute for sugar cane.

Some of the women from the village nearby joined us in the next task of potato picking and we formed a long row across the width of the field slowly moving forward throwing the potatoes into sacks as we went.

On the surface of the soil were strips of silver foil, each about a foot long, lying haphazardly with smaller silver coloured sheets from which sequins may have been stamped at some time. We were warned by the men never to touch these. They were referred to as 'Window' and were not dangerous to us, but they were there to foil the enemy radar by confusing the signals from the nearby air bases.

One morning at the beginning of June, we were settling down to work when we could not help noticing much more noise than usual from the air base in the next field whose perimeter fence adjoined our field. There was much revving of engines and suddenly, above our heads a huge troop carrying plane towing a glider rose slowly into the morning sky, gradually gaining height. Then another, and another, until the noise was almost unbearable and the sky seemed black with these monsters.

They were so low that we could see the faces inside and we waved enthusiastically as this was clearly an unusual moment. They may have waved back, but, presumably they had just been told of their destination which would have been secret until they were aboard, so that they were probably too apprehensive to think about anything apart from the task that lay ahead of them. Over a hundred miles away, my future husband, a young man playing cricket at a public school, paused to wonder at the sight of so many gliders, the other end of the amazing armada, knowing that his turn to join the army was fast approaching. The next day our group of young farmers were given a day off. Nancy, Jean and I decided to cycle to the nearest town, Newark, and, as we knew no one else there, Nancy decided to visit her elder brother who had recently taken up a post as a junior doctor at Newark Hospital. Finding the hospital was easy as we followed a convoy of Army ambulances and, discarding our bicycles, we walked up the path to a door at the centre of the U shaped building and into a deserted entrance hall. We were just wondering where to go when a surgeon, in operating theatre green and rubber boots, strode through the lobby. He looked harassed and rather brusquely asked us what we wanted. When Nancy asked if she could see her brother, the surgeon put out his hand in a rather fatherly way on her shoulder and his manner changed. "Not today my dear," he said softly, "not today". So, accepting his advice we left, but walking back down the path, we could not help being aware of soldiers at the windows of the wards on either side of the path trying to attract our attention by whistling and waving. It certainly wasn't unusual for girls to be whistled at by soldiers but this was something over the top!

Walking down the street, afterwards our attention was drawn to a sheet of newspaper blowing about. We just caught the dramatic headline 'D Day At Last, Allies Invade Europe'. It was only then that we could explain the armada of gliders, on their way to Normandy landing beaches, and the relief of the men in the hospital who had survived the hell on the other side of the Channel in the first wave of landings the previous day, but been wounded, and, on D-day +1, had been quickly evacuated home for treatment.

Now we knew that we were probably the last girls that some of the airbourne boys ever saw, for many of the gliders crashed on landing, and that the doctors were still fighting for the lives of the seriously wounded, with more coming in all the time.

Without knowing it, we were watching history being made, and it was no time for frivolous visitors.

As the war went wearily on with its inevitable losses, at home everyone, men, women and children became more involved in helping to beat Hitler. For women, it meant a daily struggle to feed and clothe the family and to keep things as normal as possible. For the men in factories and farms, it meant long hours of hard labour under dangerous conditions.

My father had begun to build his work-force again, though in cramped premises in Sheffield, and our home was once more our own. The War Compensation Scheme to enable those bombed out to start again was not paid until after the war was over! However, Government contracts began to come in and, because the war was continuing fiercely in the far east against Japan, and curved knives for clearing jungle were essential to the progress of our army, the order books filled again and, with some reorganisation, the cutlery industry began to recover, almost entirely on Government work.

The bombing raids still took place, but were on other cities, and eventually gave way to V1 and V2 rocket raids which mostly affected the south of England and were very much feared. No reconstruction took place in Sheffield until after the war, and even then, shortages of men and materials meant that its progress was very slow. Permits were needed for any work on private buildings which had not been war damaged, and there was a strict limit on the amount that could be spent on improvements.

As no civilians could travel during the war, our holidays were non-existent. The trains were crowded with troops, and were often late or cancelled, there was no spare petrol, and all the seaside holiday resorts within reach were training centres for the troops. The sands had coils of barbed wire along them and some were mined. Troops were billeted in all the hotels and houses along the front, and the general effect was of shabbiness and neglect which lasted long after 1945.

Entertainment was provided by the 'Holidays at ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½' weeks, organised by the local council, and varied events took place in Queens Park in Chesterfield. All sorts of athletic events, concerts, dancing and competitions took place and were enjoyed by all. It was unsophisticated but we were happy to be there at all.

The Red Cross organised a 'Mile of pennies' - a trail of white paint on the edge of the pavements in central Chesterfield, on which one was asked to lay pennies edge to edge. The result must have been quite rewarding, and we were told that the money was for parcels for our prisoners of war in German or Italian hands. After the war, it was realised how important those parcels were in keeping up morale, and how useful even the packing was in making ingenious items to help escape plans.

As Chesterfield was designated a 'Garrison town' there were many soldiers about, centred on the Drill Hall in Ashgate Road. Dances were held there, but I was not allowed to go, as I was considered too young. Some of the nurses went to dances at Matlock Hydro (now County Hall) where the Intelligence Service was stationed. Later some of the men there were dropped in enemy occupied France to spy on the Germans.

One arrived back from a secret and dangerous mission and reported to the War Office. There was Winston Churchill, who poked the man in the chest and growled, 'Why are you not in France, young man?' When it was explained that the man had been picked up from a secret location in France by Lysander that morning, and had just arrived with important information, Churchill apologised - a rare event indeed!

This man married the hospital sister whom he had met at Matlock and became a diplomat in Paris after the war, but continually suffered from the injuries caused by frequent parachute landings.

In May 1945, the war in Europe ended, although it dragged on in the east against Japan until the dropping of the Atom bomb. On that day, although there were celebrations in London, there was very little rejoicing in other places. People were very tired and they had lost so much that they could hardly celebrate. In fact, had they known that the shortages would get worse, not better, and that the victors would suffer as much as the defeated Germans, they would have been very depressed.

May 18th, the day of Victory or VE Day, was fine for some, but I had to take my French Oral examination, part of my French School Certificate.

I had been learning French with no hope of ever being able to use it, as France had been in enemy hands for years. The panel of interviewers, on the other hand, had, before the war, been to France, and, to them, the prospect that now opened up of being free to go back again was thrilling and they were in a good mood! I think that they would have given top marks to anyone that joyous day, and so, with amazing ease I was given marks which only a native born Frenchman could achieve!

Pr-BR

Part 1 of this story can be viewed at www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ww2/A7240736

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