Small Town Memories

Communications:
Radio — we always switched on the 1 o’clock news
Posters and slogans: “Careless Talk Costs lives”, “Food is a Munition of War, Don’t Waste it”. There were excellent and amusing posters by Fougasse.

At school: A London school (Regent Street Polytechnic Boys School) was evacuated to our country town and we shared the school — we had the morning, they the afternoon. As exam years we had some afternoon lessons in the church hall.
Each day there was a check that we had our gas masks.
The school had been built on the open air principle — two walls were entirely French windows. These were criss crossed with strips of brown paper against splinters. We practised air-raid alerts — get under your desk!

War in the Air
One day there was a dog-fight above the school when three Spitfires attacked a Heinkel 111. Machine gun bullets whizzed into the school. The Heinkel was shot down and landed on a nearby beach, with no casualties.

Another German bomber was shot down on the hillside near my cousin’s home. She was a nurse and helped to extract the crew from the burning plane.

Our small town was no target for bombers although we had to keep a strict blackout. There were many nights when waves of bombers were passing over to attack Bristol or the South Wales ports. We could see the attacks across the water. My father and uncle used to sit up drinking our home-made wine to keep up their courage. Sometimes the bombers jettisoned their bombs at random if they were lost or damaged.

Once a bomber dropped parachute flares, probably because the crew were lost. They lit up the sky for about ten minutes and we felt very naked and vulnerable.

Throughout the war troops were billeted in the town, or under canvas. The NAAFI kept a list of homes where men could get a hot bath and perhaps a meal and a family evening. We made a lot of friends like this. At first they were British or from the continent, Polish or Czech, but later on it was mainly the Yanks.

My elder brother joined the army but the next brother was an instrument maker, making binoculars in a small workshop in the town. Although he very much wanted to join up he was not allowed to as his work was of national importance. I would have liked top join the services at 18 but they said that it was more important to finish my education as teachers would be needed after the war.

At Bristol University we could see the effect of the bombing — piles of bricks lined the roads and the Great Hall and Library of the university were gutted. We did fire-watching duties to tackle incendiary bombs.

My mother was a good manager of the small rations of food and we grew a lot of vegetables, but at our hall of residence the food was awful and for the first time I experienced hunger. It was almost impossible to buy food unless you could produce your ration card. Towards the end of the war and even afterwards food was very tight.

My parents kept a hotel and I remember that the 1 o’clock news was on while our young waitress served lunch. The newsreader announced that the Ark Royal had been sunk with the loss of all hands. Barbara’s brother was one of the crew.

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