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Childhood wartime memories of living in Queen’s Park, Bedford Part Three — ‘Making do’ and the impact of war. The end of the war and post war food shortages.

Part three of an oral history interview with Mr. Richard J. Hughes conducted by Jenny Ford on behalf of Bedford Museum

“Another thing we children used to have was ‘winter warmers’. We used to have a tin can, punch some holes in it, put a piece of rag in it, have a piece of wire for a handle then we used to light the rag and then blow it out. And then put the lid on the tin and swing it around and around and the circulation of air used to make the rag glow and then you could warm your hands on the tin. They were called winter warmers. They were dangerous things, I’ve seen many of them come off and go through somebody’s window, come off the piece of wire and go straight through somebody’s front window! The same as whips and tops I’ve seen people - we used to whip the top and I’ve seen the top go up straight through somebody’s window, we used to run then!

I can remember the Police Boxes that had a light on top and when they wanted to attract the Policeman’s attention they used to flash a light on the top of the Police Box and then he would go and answer the phone. I can remember seeing that. There was a Police Box in Ford End Road, next to the Gas Works.

They used to come round and collect scraps for the pigs. They’d have anything! They’d have old bread, potato peelings, cabbage, brussel sprouts when you’d got them ready for cooking, anything. They used to come round. They used to have great big iron tubs and come round. They used to come round with a horse and cart or a horse and trap with these big things in and then you would go out and anything you’d got you’d, say old bread, when you grate carrots and that. They used to boil it up and feed the pigs.

That’s one of the things I can remember about us keeping chickens because us boiling up potato peelings and mixing them up with bran and you would get an absolute super aroma with bran, I could have had it myself. The chickens used to love it. We used to go to Coles in Gwyn Street. There were two Corn Chandlers in Bedford, there was Coles in Gwyn Street or there was Mayes next to the Corn Exchange. Mayes where they used to roast the barley they are still there.

They had great big glass windows they used to put a big disc in the middle and wires to each corner of the disc so that when there was a blast and the window shook it couldn’t go out. When you went in the town all the shops had got these big discs. I believe there was a big rubber disc and it had four restraining wires so you know it stopped the window from going in and out, it kept it still. I know lots of the shops had that.

But if you wanted anything like the electricity or your gas and that, it was a job to get somebody to do it. Because lots of the people who were doing it prior to the war had been put into the Army or the Navy or the Air Force and lots of people were doing jobs that really they should have been retired from. I mean when I started at Allen’s there were people still there who were over eighty years of age. I remember a little man named Archie Watts when I started there in 1946, he was 82 years old and he was still working. Because they were so skilled and there was nobody to replace them.

If you heard of somebody who you knew had been killed, there was one or two people in Queen’s Park who were killed and you know that was really hard. When you heard about people you didn’t know it didn’t seem to hit you so much but when it was people you knew, it was terrible really.

I can’t remember why, but during the war I was taken to London for a day, while the war was on. We got on the train and I can remember getting off at St.Pancras and going outside and you couldn’t imagine the devastation, everywhere you looked it was just piles of bricks. It was like, well, it was so amazing, I really couldn’t take it in. I can’t remember why we went there but I went for a day with my father, whether somebody had died or something I don’t know, but I can remember the devastation, it was terrible. I believe we got on the underground because the underground was OK because it didn’t get hit like on top. But I can remember the piles of bricks and the devastation, it was terrible. It was just like fields of bricks. Because we used to hear on the radio that Coventry was being bombed and London was being bombed and that but hearing it on there you couldn’t imagine what it was like. I mean as I say in Bedford we went and saw the theatre which was bombed and the hotel that was bombed, that was bad but when I went to London oh, that was terrible. The only other time you saw anything like that was if you went to the cinema and you saw the Gaumont British News - that would show such devastation.

I had a bicycle that I made myself. I used to collect piece here and pieces there and I made a bicycle. In those days you could go somewhere on your bicycle and leave it outside a shop and you’d perhaps meet a friend and forget about it and go home and if you went back in a fortnight it was still there. But when we were boys we used to go everywhere. We used to go over to Twinwoods to watch aeroplanes land and take off. We used to bike everywhere in those days, I mean we’d go miles and miles and miles. We’d take a bottle of cold tea and something to eat - an apple. I can remember during the war too we could buy a bar of Cadburys chocolate for threepence or a KitKat for twopence, that’s if there were any to have and they were only what they call your personal points which were for sweets and things.

And another thing was cigarettes because my father used to smoke, you would hear on the grapevine that say, Swaines in Ford End Road had got some cigarettes and everybody would be down there! There was lots of black market as well, people selling things. If you’d got money you could get anything. People who were well off enough to have a car, they used to be able to buy petrol coupons.

The shirts were just below the knee and a lot of women wore sort of a man’s jacket, that was the fashion. I know ladies stockings and things were almost impossible to get and they were on the black market and ladies would sort of pay anything to get stockings. Well, it used to be stuff like lipstick and powder all them sort of things were in very short supply. I can remember my eldest sister, when she was courting her husband it would be half an hour titivating - everything, every hair had to be in place, every bit of lipstick had to be perfect and that. I think that the girls in them days were much smarter, they were more appearance conscious than they are now-a-days. I mean almost every man wore a collar and tie and a hat.

I remember too the Land Girls coming to Bedford during the war. We had a Land Girl billeted with us. Funny, she was billeted with us and in the end my brother married her. She came from Wolverhampton. She used to wear a big hat and thick corduroy jodhpurs and she was a big strong girl. I believe she worked for Rawlings at Biddenham. She used to drive a tractor, do ploughing and herding cows. We used to see lots of them walking about. They were from all over the country and some of them were quite refined ladies who had never been used to doing any work but they were conscripted and they had to do it. Because everybody had to work, you couldn’t say you weren’t going to do it! Because when I started at Allen’s there were loads and loads of ladies worked there, they worked machines, drove cranes, you know. They did as good a job as a man.

I’ve just remembered the Italian Prisoners of War. They used to have lots of Italian Prisoners of War in this area and they used to have them working on the farms. They used to wear a brown uniform with a big yellow triangle or big yellow circle on it so that - we used to say that if they run off the troops know where to shoot - but it was so that if they did wander off they could be easily recognised.

I can remember the celebrations we had. Every street in every town or village had a tremendous party. We had one in our street, they had all the trestles out and everybody chipped in with the something, somebody made cakes, somebody made sandwiches, somebody made buns, somebody made lemonade because you had to make your own lemonade in those days, you couldn’t go out and buy it. We had flags, bunting. We made paper chains, I remember me and my sister making paper chains, oh it was fantastic.

When the Japanese surrendered it wasn’t really our war as much as the war in Europe because it wasn’t anywhere near us. They had celebrations but nothing like the VE celebrations. I know a chap who lived across the road from me - he was a Japanese Prisoner of War. When he came home I can remember him. When he went he was a six foot, strapping chap and when he came home he was like a matchstick. He was, well if you didn’t see him you couldn’t imagine how thin he was but he got better, yes he got better and he got married and had a family.

I can’t remember before the war ever seeing a banana and when the war was over somehow somebody know that there was bananas coming and they were going to Fyffes who had a depot off at the top of Commercial Road, Bedford. Fyffes had a depot there and half of Bedford went down there on a Saturday afternoon. I can remember it now, on a Saturday afternoon and this train came and it had all these bright green bananas! There was some for Bedford and they unloaded them and they went to Dynes’s fruit shop in Midland Road because they had an underground ripening room and all these bananas went down there and a couple of weeks later they were in the shops and each person was allowed ONE! I think that was the first banana I ever had. I can remember them coming and as I say there was hundreds of people down that depot watching these bananas being took off the train. Then as I say they went to Dynes’s and they were ripened and then we were allowed to have one. It really was amazing. Because there were lots of things during the war that we didn’t have, we didn’t have things like grapefruit, oranges were very scarce. Anything that came into the country was scarce. They had to go and be ripened off. I can remember these great big hands of bananas. But then things didn’t get better very quick. It was in the 1950s before rationing came off. In fact bread was rationed for the first time after the war had ended.�

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