主播大秀

BACKGROUND
In the summer of 1939 I was on holiday with my younger brother staying with our grandparents and family in Witney, Oxon. When war was declared on the 3rd September it was decided that we should not return to London, but remain where we were until we could rejoin our schools wherever they were to be evacuated.

In June 1940 I rejoined my convent in Eastbourne, Sussex where it had been evacuated from London. A few weeks later because of air raids there we were re-evacuated by train to Llandovery, Camarthenshire. The journey took twelve hours because the train was shunted off the line to allow troop trains to have priority. We remained in South Wales until the Christmas Holidays in December 1942 when we returned to London. By that time I was in Form V, nearing my sixteenth birthday in June, and busy preparing for the GSC examinations that were to be sat between 25 June and 8 July.

IN LONDON
My father was in a reserve job in the bank, also much involved as a voluntary `special constable' in the City, as a fire warden at the bank, and as an officer in the 主播大秀 Guard. As is obvious with all the voluntary work he was often out of the house. We had a charwoman during the week to keep us clean and tidy.

My mother was a social welfare worker involved in evacuation work in Cornwall. Consequently her visits to London were few and brief, squeezed in whenever she could manage them, but we kept in touch regularly by telephone and letters.

Thus, in returning home it was to a different circumstance from that before the war started when I was aged twelve.

Being bombed was a new experience for me. The siren was outside my bedroom windows, and the sound of it was so loud that my heart would flutter. We lived in a three-storeyed house over Barclays Bank, and at night when the bombers came over we would go down to the cellars below to shelter. Eventually, when we were disturbed nightly, we made up beds and slept down there in the large stationery room - rather than go out into the street shelter outside our home. The cellars were warmed by the large coke boiler which was on 24-hours in the boiler room, and there were water pipes around the adjoining room where we slept. Incidentally, if we had had a direct hit by a bomb we would have little chance of survival as we should have been burnt or drowned probably. Oddly enough we did not dwell on those morbid thoughts for it had become a way of life, and there was too much else going on in our lives. We were always very tired and slept soundly when we could.

One night when we were still sleeping on the top floor a bomb fell behind the house opposite. In doing so the impact broke my bedroom window and as I sat up the blast blew me out of bed. I was too surprised to be afraid and quickly scrambled up to check if my father was all right in the next room, which he was. All the windows were criss-crossed with wide sticky tape to reduce flying glass, also covered by black-out blinds and the normal curtains; so, although there was broken glass on the floor, it had not blown over my bed in the middle of the large room.

We had relatives and friends visiting us whether or not my father was out on his duties and often because of them to keep me company.

In that sixteenth year I noted in my diary so many films that we must have been going to the `pictures' twice a week. I listed each film and many of them are viewed today. We went often to theatres and concerts, and sometimes to trade shows. I see in my diary on 15 December 1943 that I went with a school friend to the Cambridge Theatre to see `The Story of the London Philharmonic Orchestra'.

Outside school hours that summer my friends and I spent a lot of time swimming and rowing. It was an age when we exchanged many letters with friends and family, and also sent telegrams when necessary. We were sewing and knitting as clothing coupons were scarce - our lisle stockings had to be darned and re-darned. Sweets were on coupons so the choice of them required some deliberation to get the best value. I first encountered powdered milk and reconstituted eggs in London - not very nice.

My father was a clever pianist and had a grand piano, which was fortunate when a bomb fell on a steepled church opposite our house demolishing it and bringing down our living room ceiling and chimney, as he was able to scramble under it for protection. He told me he was covered with soot, dust and plaster and very shaken afterwards - but unhurt.

READING FOR PLEASURE.
My diary lists the books I read during the year - nearly all the classics that are read today. Sister Marie, our headmistress, encouraged those of us in Forms V and VI to read as many books as possible, because when we left school we would become busy in our lives with little time to read for pleasure. We had an extensive library at the school, and as my friend Ann Williams and I were school librarians for those two years, we had ample opportunities with books to select, read, discuss and advise. Sister Marie also requested that each school leaver should donate a book for the library, a splendid idea to show appreciation for our education and to add new books to the library.

SPORTS
As Games Captain for the last two years at school I received a redirected letter from the Newadd Fawr School in Wales on 4 March, 1943, challenging Notre Dame to a First VII netball match on 27 March. Sadly, I had to write back explaining that the letter had been forwarded to me, and as our school had returned to London we could not accept the challenge. A more cheerful note recorded a match with St. George's First VII team whom we beat 16 to 10! Netball was a very popular game with us all. We also played hockey, rounders, tennis and enjoyed gymnastics, dancing and swimming.

HOLIDAYS ON THE FARM
Sometimes at weekends and in school holidays I visited my grandmother who at the age of 66 married an old friend and farmer at Turville Heath, near Henley-on-Thames. On visits there I learnt to milk cows, to help in looking after the horses and cattle, sheep pigs and poultry. Once I helped the land girl to whitewash the barn. I loved the novelty of those experiences, and going to Reading market with my new grandfather. Harvesting was hard work but good fun too with the other helpers. I never heard an air raid there although I heard the bombers flying overhead.

MINISTRY OF FOOD
This government department arranged to dig up part of Turville Heath and plant potatoes. That was that, and further work was done. So, when the potatoes were ready, the local people dug them up and ate them! Now the turf has grown over and there is no sign of that governmental enterprise.

NEWSPAPER/WIRELESS/PROPAGANDA
Most of us had relatives and friends in the forces, so we read the daily newspapers and listened to the wireless with more than normal interest in the news. Winston Churchill, our Prime Minister, was a great inspiration with his encouraging broadcasts; we listened and were heartened by his speeches, and the general public thought highly of him as a war leader. Then there was `Lord Haw Haw' who was heard interrupting programmes on the wireless from time to time with Nazi propaganda. We heard, mimicked and laughed at him, but his messages were needling and one felt uncomfortable about them.

Papers and magazines were full not only of war news, but of humorous cartoons, poems, jokes, of `make do and mend' suggestions for doing the best with clothing coupons by renovation of old garments, how to make children's clothes out of adults' clothes, how to extend the life of shoes by having extra rubber soles fitted, adding toe and heel metal tags, and, for cold weather, cutting thick brown paper inner soles.

There were recipes to make the most of food rations and to vary meals. Cod liver oil and orange juice were available for babies. We all ate the national brown bread until after the war was over. Bananas disappeared from our diet, not to re-appear, I think, until 1951, when I recall a man selling some very bruised looking ones near Hyde Park Corner on the end of Grosvenor Place, with a queue of excited looking people waiting to buy them.

Despite rationing I do not recall being hungry and I believe that the rationed food did not harm us, but it was difficult to be fat in those days. I weighed eight and a quarter stones fully clothed with shoes at five feet four and a half!

GAS MASK
We carried a gas mask in a box over our shoulder whenever we went out. This was issued at the beginning of the war with careful instructions and demonstrations how it should be worn. Fortunately, we never needed to wear them for protection. But, of course, throughout the war we did not know that gas would not be used.

BLACKOUT / ARP WARDEN
At dusk the blackout blinds and curtains were drawn so that enemy aircraft pilots were not aided in navigation by the lights from below. For that reason there were no lamp lights, no neon lights on buildings, no lights at railway stations, nor on the trains or buses - no lights on anywhere. Have you heard the wartime song, `When the lights go on in London all over the town'? At that time it was hard to imagine. Most of us carried a small torch pointed down when we were out after dark. There were air raid precaution wardens on the streets who, on seeing a light, would shout loudly "Put out that light".

We were aware of `Fifth Columnists' (spies). There were posters on buildings and walls, in trains and buses warning us that `walls have ears', and similar slogans, to make us careful of what we said. We did not press our servicemen for details of what they were doing or where; if they wished to tell us anything they would. Airletters (called aerograms in those days) from service people abroad were censored, and sometimes a thick blue line would delete a word or phrase for security reasons.

THE PICTURES
At the pictures (or `the flicks') we had a full programme of advertisements, cartoons, trailers for future films, the main film, the `B' film, and a newsreel that encouraged us to believe that the war was going in our favour. One could go into the performance at any time as the programme was continuous and it was possible to sit until the part where we had entered reappeared. At the end of the last showing for the night we would stand for the National Anthem. Often there would be a rush to leave the building before the Anthem started to catch a bus home, to avoid the crowd exiting, or for whatever reason.

The programmes were usually changed twice weekly. Usherettes would show you with a torch to your seats as there were different prices for the positions - cheapest at the front, dearer towards the back. At the interval the usherettes would appear with trays strapped around their shoulders with ice-creams, cigarettes, and during the war I do not recall anything else. In the West End of London there were news-theatres that always seemed to be open, and I seem to remember that those continuous showings lasted half-an-hour.

THE WAR
As it affected me it seemed endless; we were all reading about it, seeing the news-reels and hearing the news on the wireless. In London as elsewhere we were being bombed. Two of my uncles were in the airforce and two in the army. Three of these were young married men, and the fourth an 18-year-old who was called up on his 18th birthday - the very morning. Luckily they all survived the war. My father was the eldest of nine surviving children. We knew young men were killed or `missing in action'. War was very real to us, although not to the extent for those living in Europe. The streets and transport were full of uniformed men and women on leave or travelling back to their posts.

The progress of the war was not discussed at school for we were busy in our classes. Even when we had been awakened by bombing raids we did not refer to it. Why should we? We were all experiencing the same events, the sights we saw the following mornings on our journeys to school, the bombed buildings, the rubble and the people clearing the sites. I do remember a passing comment by our geography teacher that even as she was teaching the boundaries of the European countries, they were altering in the course of the Nazis invasions. Life continued as normally as possible in the circumstances for some of us. One learnt to be a fatalist about the bombs and the shortages of food and goods, even at sixteen. It was a time in history that we were experiencing, and to which it was necessary to adapt. It helped to pray.

In 1943 we had street parades of all kinds including representatives of all the Services, the 主播大秀 Guard, ARP Wardens, Fire Watchers, and of the organisations that were helping the war effort, in an assortment of uniforms, and with bands to boost our morale. For instance `Wings for Victory' week commenced on 8th March; our small school aimed to raise 拢100, and actually collected 拢344. Another time there was a `War Weapons' week. Previously in Llandovery we had collected acorns for the farmers to feed their pigs, each house at school competing in our attempts to collect the most!

To save money we had a National Savings Scheme at school. There was always some activity or other going on to aid the war defence.

DOODLE BUGS
On the 15th June 1944 I was at a birthday party in Kingston when we were interrupted by an air raid alert, and as we walked over the lawn to the Anderson shelter we saw the first of the pilotless `planes' flying low and at an angle. We did not know then that they were pilotless, but we were struck how odd they looked in the summer sky with a flame flaring from the tail end. Thereafter they came over every day and night and became known variously as `buzz bombs', `doodle bugs', or Vls.

We could hear them approaching, then the noise would stop followed by a screaming sound as one would plummet to the ground. In subsequent days we learnt to count the number of seconds after the noise had stopped to judge how close the bomb would fall. The sirens were going off all the time, and it was hard to remember whether we were on an alert or an all-clear. "The doodle bugs are a wretched nuisance" so I wrote in my diary! Our RAF boys were shooting many of them down as they came over the sea, but still many more reached inland.

IN CONCLUSION
Despite disturbed sleep amid the air raids that disrupted classes, I succeeded in passing my GSC; and this brings me to the end of my sixteenth year. I should mention that my younger brother by then had long since left Witney and rejoined his school in Godalming, Surrey. Witney has now been my home for twenty-three years as my husband and I moved here in 1977.

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