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Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With String

The Second World War holds so many memories for so many people, no matter their age; even the young have vivid memories at an earlier age than their counterparts in non violent areas; this is such a story. The fog of war is conversely true for young children; theirs is a crystal clear, microscopic view of the world, with a virgin slate that knows no comparison everything is new and once written upon, the slate remains indelibly scored for life, bad intermingled with the good.

I stood on the seat of the toilet, in our "flat", looking to the Northwest over the area known as Clyde Banks - in it's day, one of the worlds largest shipbuilding ports - and I watched in terror as the church across the road went up in flames. This was my church, the place where I went with my friends and sang songs. I learned in later years that the church wasn't bombed, but one of the large balloon barrages that had been place around the city, to prevent the German planes from flying in low, was probably what I saw the reflection of, burning in the stained glass windows of my church.

I played in the rubble of the bombed out buildings next door to the church. We used to gather the bricks and make forts or shelters. These structures were never very tall as we were under school age and didn't have the strength to lift the bricks to any great height, which was probably just as well.

Decades passed and I went to University, with all the phobias and fears still locked away; I didn't understand much about myself - why I reacted the way I did to certain things in my environment. Why did the barking of dogs, and the sound of emergency sirens, set my nerves on edge; why did I hate the smell of rubber, loud noises; small things that loomed so large in my life? It took a course in psychology to unleash memories that I had repressed, successfully, for so long.

Sound, smell, sight, the three S’s that are so essential to life, are normally pleasant ones for the young, but not so in Britain during the early 1940’s; this was the era of growing up fast, very fast; no time for childhood pleasures such as toys, there were none, not even a lone teddy bear, the staple of so many children prior and since, to sooth away the fears.

When the Germans crossed the English Channel, en route to their destination, the air-raid sirens would be sounded first on the East Coast of Britain and progressively westward to their destination, Clyde Banks. Long before the sound of the sirens could be heard by we lowly humans, the dogs would hear the wail and set up one of their own; then the sirens would begin and my mother would grab the gas mask - we only had one and it was for an adult - and placing it on my face, she would run with me to the air raid shelter. The smell of the rubber gas mask was so noxious that I would gag just at the thought. For years I subconsciously equated the barking of dogs with the imminent sounding of sirens and smell of rubber.

Without the customary store bought toys we were left to our own devices and those of our parents, should we be so lucky. In my case my very talented mother built and painted me a wooden rocking horse that I called Dobbin; never was there such a wonderful animal, I am sure: he was black and white, with a bright green saddle seat and oh, how I loved to ride my horse in the dusty, chicken wire scored, shafts of early morning sunlight. I remember the window of our kitchen as having wire over the inside of the glass to prevent the glass from being blown in in shards, should there be a bomb dropped nearby; the other windows had very substantial black drapes that would make the room totally dark on the inside during the day and impervious to light on the outside at night. On my second birthday my father, who had been off chasing Rommel all over North Africa, sent me an armful of bright yellow daffodils and red tulips; when I was about two and a half he came home on leave, to meet me for the first time, and brought me a beautiful doll that he had traded his cigarettes for in Italy. When we got up the first morning my father put his pajamas over the back of a chair. “That man is putting his pajamas on the back of our chair; that’s not where we put our pajamas,” I complained to my mother. “That man is your father,” groused my father with a scowl! Needless to say this did not make me his favorite person at that point in time, but what did I know?

The first Christmas, that I remember, we had a beautiful tree with a magnificent “Blue Fairy” on the very top; this was a very special tree as it was a validation of my nightly dreams of flying freely with the fairies to their wonderful parties where there were all sorts of sweeties and everyone had beautiful dresses and lots to eat. There wasn’t much to eat during the War as everything was heavily rationed: one egg per week for Mother and I but seldom sweeties as there was little sugar to make them. My grandmother used to save her rations of butter and sugar until I came to visit and then she would roll the butter in sugar and feed it to me; it was years before I could stand the taste of butter after that. One thing that never seemed to be in short supply was the weekly tablespoon of cod liver oil with a synthetic orange flavoured drink to wash it down; I imagine the idea was to give us our vitamin D, but oh, how I loathed these weekly trips to the building where we were weighed, measured and fed this concoction! On a bus trip one day, an American serviceman gave me a rare treat, a banana, but I had never seen a banana, so when he subsequently opened it I recoiled in horror ….. I had thought he was giving me a canary, just like grandmas’, and now here he was ripping its head off and popping it in his mouth!

There were no shopping bags to carry home your purchases and paper was in short supply, thus it was my job to smooth out the paper and untangle any knots in the strings of the brown paper packages when we brought them home, then we could take the paper and string with us on our next trip. I think this was my mothers’ way of keeping me busy because of the lack of toys.

Occasionally there was a little old man who came with a push cart to our back court. He would collect jelly jars and rags and give the children things, but I don’t remember what the things were as mother rarely let me go down to give him anything.

Ladies stockings were also unavailable, so it was fortunate for my mother that I had just the right shade and texture for her to pluck the odd strand of my hair to mend the ladders in her stockings.

Although some things are crystal clear in my memory others were mixed like the one where mother would admonish me to wash my hands or I would get germs: my young mind interpreted this as the Germans (germs) coming through the trees in our favorite park, with their guns drawn, to shoot me, if I didn't wash properly.

For as much depravation as there was during this time, there were also advantages. No lights at nighttime meant that the night sky was visible with a clarity that is unheard of in modern times with all the light pollution, hence I grew to love watching the heavens wheel by the darkened windows and could spot Venus correctly before I turned two. There was no rubber for tires, no metal or petrol for automobiles, all of which had gone into the war effort, thus there were few vehicles on the streets which meant that small children needn’t be as closely monitored as they are now in large cities.

My parents took me away from Britain after the War, but they couldn't take me away from the memories; memories formed at such a young age stay with you for a lifetime. I had no conscious knowledge of the man called Hitler, but it was drummed into our little brains that anything said within the family was to remain within the family; children in other countries occupied by these strange Germans, had often inadvertently caused the demise of their entire families by speaking openly, so I was told.

Each "War" since, has torn at my soul: I mourn, not only for all the young men and women who have lost their future and all that might have been, but for the loss of security and innocence of those children, inadvertently caught up in the affairs of adults. How many Michelangelo’s, Einstein’s, Burns’, Rachmaninoff’s, Shakespeare’s, Pasteur’s and their ilk have we lost or have never been born because of war?

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