“My first memory of the war was in

September 1939; my younger brother Peter

was sitting in a tin bath in front of the fire. My
father who was a prison officer was at work.
The Bakelite radio was switched on. I always
thought that the radio looked like a face with
the dial as a mouth with adjusting knobs as
eyes, but such a huge thing it was, compared
to modern radios. On came Neville
Chamberlin and to announce the declaration of
war on Germany. My mother pulled her apron
over her face and began to cry. I didn’t realise
at the time, but she was crying because my
father was an RAF reservist and was most
more than likely be sent to war. However, he
was not, as due to his work in the prison
service, he was considered a priority.”

“Rationing was one of the biggest things that affected me. When coupons were
introduced there soon became a black market and you often saw ‘spivs’ (the slang
name given to dealers of these coupons or stolen goods) dealing them in the
backstreets. My mother had a large bucket full of waterglass and kept eggs in it to
keep them fresh for longer. But, when the eggs went off they floated to the top and
smelt absolutely foul. Rations of butter and margarine were combined to make a more
adequate portion of ‘Butmar’ which was used in cooking and for your everyday toast.
Meat was restricted and supplements such as corned beef and spam were used. There
was occasionally rabbit that dad had managed to trap. Cheaper cuts of meat such as
haslet and offal were in common circulation and ‘Bubble and Squeak’ was a common
meal made up of frying the Sunday roast leftovers with potato and cabbage. No exotic
fruits were available except for the occasional dried banana, which I though looked
like dog dirt. Sweets were unheard of
even if you did have coupons! Porridge
and bread and milk were common foods
that we ate in abundance. As there was
no fridge, storage was poor but some
items were kept on the concrete thrall
close to the floor in an attempt to keep
them cool. Sugar was limited, so an
artificial sweetener called Saccharin was
used which was fairly ineffectual
especially in baking.”

“My father was a smoker, but few cigarettes were available so he grew nicotiana,
which he believed to be tobacco. We chopped the leaves up and stored them in baby’s
milk tins in the airing cupboard. This caused all our clothes to smell of cigarettes and
was disgusting! There was also a limited coal supply, so we dismantled fences for the
wood and swept up all the coal dust and compressed it to form little briquettes to be
burnt on the fire. Clothes were also rationed, so bits of cardboard were put into
bottoms of shoes to cover up the holes and mother used to mend socks using a
‘mushroom’. Everything was wool or cotton, as there were no synthetics until after
the war. One day I need a new vest as my other one had practically disintegrated
through wear. The shop only had girls’ ones with ribbon, and that’s what I got, and it
was very embarrassing I must say!”

“Schooling was difficult for me

as, because of the nature of my
father’s job, we were moved
around a lot. I had six primary
schools in total which made
friendships difficult to sustain.
Even if we moved back to the
same place and the same
school, groups of friends had
moved. At Hollesley we had to
walk over two miles to school
each day, which you slowly got
used to. As I moved schools I
had to learn various different styles of handwriting and when I had perfected one, we
moved and I had to start again. It was frustrating! At school we had air raid practices
and carried our gas masks around in a cardboard box. The standard procedure was to
either get into our school concrete shelter or take cover under our desk. The school’s
shelter was quite big, but soon got stuffy with all the people in there but in the winter
we did not complain about each others warmth. To reduce paper usage we had to
write up the margins. There was sticky tape on the windows to stop them breaking
into shards if a bomb hit. There were no dinners at schools but each child was allowed
a third of a pint of milk each. All the staff were old men and women as the fit had
been sent off to fight. In my elementary school at Melton pupils aged 5-14 were split
into three classes so you could end up being with people three years older than
yourself, which was difficult as they were often more streetwise.”

“We often went to Mousehold Heath, to see

the AA or ‘ack-ack’ guns and the rocket
launchers. We collected the discarded shell
cases from those guns, much to the
annoyance of the local home-guard and
ARP. There were many barrage balloons at
Mousehold Heath and one broke loose and
bounced all the way down Britannia Road
(at one end near the barracks) with many
men trying to stop it. Grandma Ellis once
came to Norwich, in 1940 in fact, by train,
and when it stopped on the track she climbed out showing her directoires which was
very amusing to a 5 year old boy.”

“When I think of the war, quite a lot of it was spent in air raid situations. The blackout
was enforced strongly and all cars had hooded lights. We had an Anderson and later a
Morrison shelter. The Anderson shelter was down three steps and had two bunk beds
in it. There was a single shelf with condensed milk, sugar in blue bags, baked beans
and an oil stove to heat them up. We often slept in there and it was often very cold
and very boring. In June 1941 it was a
nice evening and there was no siren. My
father saw some aircraft coming and told
us to get to the shelter. A bomb hit the
prison wall near to our house (it was
intended to hit the Coleman’s factory on
the River Yare). The explosion ripped
the front of our house clean off. My
mother fell into the shelter and sustained
major injuries. My father was thrown
over the top of the shelter into the
gooseberry bushes. When we got out of
the shelter, our chickens were running
around nude, lacking any feathers at all. Their feathers were blown off in the
explosion, much to their disgust, but our amusement.”

“From the incident with the hens and being bombed out, somehow we ended at
Grandma Ellis’s, though I don’t recall how. What I do know is that our house was
looted of valuables from our best tablecloths to our sledge were taken! In 1942 we
visited friends in London and spent many nights sleeping in the underground. The
atmosphere down there was cramped and smoky, but there were often outbursts of
singing which kept us entertained and our spirits up, helping us to fight the cold.
Getting anywhere was always a problem, as during the war all road signs were
removed to stop any enemy being able to tell where to go,
as if they wouldn’t know anyway! We all had to carry ID
cards. I was once told off by a police officer for not having
mine even at 7 years old. The Daily Express and Mirror
were used as toilet paper, cut into quarters. The Mirror had
a map of the troops’ progress after the invasion of Italy and
Normandy. Peter and I used to estimate the next day’s map
and the positions of all the troops, although it was always
bias towards the British, of course. We used to go down to
the beaches and collect cargo that had come from the many
wrecks of cargo ships. We found whole cotton bales, petrol
tanks and tea chests full of cigarettes. My father gave the
outer soggy cigarettes to the Borstal boys, but kept the dry
ones in the middle for himself. ”

“My Uncle Fred was too young to be allowed into the Army, so joined the merchant
navy at 17 years. He was torpedoed but was rescued and was shipped to Canada. One
day Grandma Ellis was sitting unwinding a pullover so that she might knit me a new
one. A taxi pulled up outside and she said ‘Looks like Freddy’, which it was. From
America he had brought two whole kit bags full, one of fresh bananas, something of
which I had no experience, and one of Cadburys Dairy Box, as chocolate wasn’t
rationed in America. We all sat down and ‘pigged out’ for a long time!”
“I got up to my fair share of mischief and adventure. One time, I cut my knee badly
on an assault course at Inkermann Barracks and had to go home to clean it up.
Grandma Ellis used Vick (which stings a lot!) and used brown bandages that could be
washed and reused again. Another near miss I had was
when I made a kart with pram wheels. I set off from the
top of the hill at a fairly slow speed but soon picked up
pace. At the bottom of this hill was a cross-road, which I
had not thought about. Just as I approached it an army
lorry appeared. The driver slammed on his brakes when
he saw me but I, on the other hand, had no brakes. I still
don’t know how it happened, but I passed under the
lorry and safely to the other side. I was followed by a
series of curses and insults from the shaken lorry driver.
Thankfully I was not injured. Many service personal that
had been injured in the many battles, wore royal blue
uniforms and went to a hospital near St. John’s
(Grandma’s home village) and used to play football and
other games with us. Among them were many amputees
and some with very serious burns, but they still were
fighting, traumatised in their heads, but still sharing the
same British patriotism.”

“The wireless was the centre of the household, and

there was a variety of programmes including the
news, the Man in Black by Valentine Dyall and the
‘Children’s Hour’ with Uncle Mac. It seems
slightly ironic how the wireless provided some of
the most memorable times of the war, yet some of
the worst news. Alvar Lidell was a particular news
reader I seem to remember, providing news and
propaganda. Once I witnessed a dogfight when two
of our planes collided, killing both pilots, yet he
reported we had no losses. I also remember how he
opened his broadcasts, ‘Here is the news and this is
Alvar Lidell reading it’.”

“In early 1944 I remember my youngest brother Robert being given a new baby gas
mask; it looked like a big black egg and was not liked by him at all, as when it was
put on much wailing followed. At Grandma Ellis’s we had a Morrison Shelter which
was like an iron table, and you slept in it. During the day it was used as table but
during the air raids it was put to its intended purpose. We used to stand and watch the
British fighters go up alongside the German ‘Doodlebugs’ and tip them over with
their wings to crash in the marshes. There were many whist drives in the area and lots
of people, mainly women, used gather together to play. One evening at a whist drive,
a ‘Doodlebug’ was heard over head its engine stopped which was the sign it was
about to drop. Immediately the women heard this, they all crammed under the thin
card tables, showing off their undergarments as they crouched down, which my
brother Peter and I found extremely funny.”
 “Planes used to crash on the
marshes, which caused lots of
excitement among us. All of the
ammunition from the plane was
taken away by the Military Police
but we were able to salvage the
flares, some cordite and the
perspex from the planes cockpit to
burn or make rings etc. One day I
saw a plane with no engine, or so I thought. I fetched my father to see it. In fact it was
prototype Gloucester Meteor but how was I supposed to know that! Towards the end
of the war, the American started to arrive at the nearby airfield to us RAF Martlesham
Heath, with chewing gum and sweets.”

“In September 1944 I recall looking up

at the sky one day and seeing numerous
gliders being towed overhead. They were
passing over on their way to Arnhem to
drop troops. From then onwards, I seem
to remember the war declining as we
slowly started to overcome the Nazi rule.
One day, my mother got a brand new
pair of nylons, her first ever. Father said
that they could fit into a matchbox, and I,
being a young boy had to try it and they
did! But on removing them from the
matchbox, it caught them on the side and
caused a big ladder down the side. Mother was not at all impressed!

“My early youth was coloured by the war and its ethos of fear, deprivation and
sadness. It left my mother ill and me with some mental scarring (I developed a severe
stutter!). However, my generation appears to have survived without a need for
counselling.”