Pigs of World War 2

This was the official way to feed a pig!!

Rationing was pretty dire during  and for a time after the war, as a youngster I was unaware of a lot of it. Though I do remember that 64 Smarties was a weeks sweet ration but Horlicks and Ovaltine tablets weren’t subject to rationing so I always had a packet handy. The amount of butter I put on a slice of toast now a days would have been a weeks ration back then but I believe it is a fact that we were a lot healthier in those days.

Naturally as a family we had to eeck out our rations in any way we could and there was a strong black market for ration coupons for everything. One of the legal ways neighbours could help out the meat ration was to club together and buy a pig give it to a friendly farmer to look after and send all the scraps of food you had to feed it. Then in due course it would be slaughtered and divided up amongest all the contributors.

One of the good things about the war was it brought communities together, people were less selfish and helped each other. Sadly that state of affairs only lasted until Margret Thatcher brought in the monetarism.

Mike's wartime shelters

Apart from the strengthened cellar I mentioned earlier there were three other shelters I got to know well during and after the war.

The first was an Anderson shelter made out of corrugated iron and buried in the garden to about half its depth with an open doorway and a blast wall in front of it. As a young boy it was a great thing to play round, we made cardboard wings which strapped to our arms and tried to fly from the top of it. The only other thing I remember of it is that on the first raid we had after it was built my mother refused to enter it as there was a frog in it. While we kept the frog company Mum sat outside the entrance for the whole of the raid.

The second shelter was at Granny’s in Hastings it was known as a Morrison shelter and was inside the house consisting for all the world like a sheet steel dining table with strong wire netting on three sides. When the siren went off the family would climb into it. Granny’s maid and I would go up to a observation area she had on her roof and watch the flying bombs coming over mainly they flew past us on their way to London but occasionally when we heard a motor stop we would dash down stairs and dive in on top of the family.

Just after the war a few public shelters remained one I remember was in a park on my way home from school a heavy brick built affair that would have only protected you from a light attack. However it was open and it is where I learnt to smoke and at 9 years old I told my Mum I’d given up smoking!

Air Raid Precautions

 This week we bought four DVD’s of World War Two not news reels or documentaries  but film for the theatre made just after the war and based on war books written by or about RAF personnel to give me a flavour of the times. The films were the Battle of Britain, Dam Busters, 633 Squadron and Reach for the Sky. Together they give a very favourable picture of the war if you’re British however we know from our time in Germany the general population there had their troubles too. I hope to pick this up in the chapter I’m researching now as one of my characters has the miss fortune to be shot down. But I want to try to give both sides a fair showing, it wasn’t particularly easy for the average man and woman in the street to avoid being caught up in some of the desperate plans of the Nazi party not as participants but even as bystanders.

The research I have done so far has been fascinating in itself, war is a terrible thing for the people of all the involved countries and the way they faced it, to the solutions they found. The other night we watched Battle of Britain and in it the air raid siren gave the warning of attack, both Mike and I felt a cold deep disturbance in our stomachs it’s amazing after so many years it still haunts you.

Mightier yet

Mike and I were fortunate during the war as our fathers were at home with us. As we lived on the South Coast my Dad was in the Civil Defence preparing the coast for the expected invasion which caused much concern at the beginning of the war. Later on he had the joyous job of undoing it all after we won the Battle of Britain and the enemy threat was reduced. Mikes Dad was rejected for the services as he had very poor eyesight so joined the Home Guard were he eventually became a Captain in charge of armaments. Naturally both Dads had duties when we had air raids and were away from home during and after the raid.

But for many the family was broken up the men, and sometimes the women, were in the forces away from home, coming home occasionally on leave and in some places giving a hand with the devastation caused by enemy action while they were there. Of course many went off to war and those left behind never saw them again. It was a sad fact but for those in the forces there was an excitement which could never be experienced in civilian life.

Such is the background to the book I am currently writing.

Let us go forward together

Sybil - carrying on from the last blog and about the Second World War. Born in 1940 I had little knowledge of the war but my mother told me of my first war time experience. I was about two or so. It was a fine day and Mum sat me outside on the lawn at the back of our house. A little while later a German fighter started to strafe the gardens of the houses were we lived. Mum panicked picked me up and rushed into the house, a bullet crashed through the kitchen window and lodged deeply in the opposite wall. It was a near thing but that was about my only real wartime experience, Mike had one or two.

Mike – we lived in a semidetached house, at the start of the war Mum and Dad strengthened the cellar where, when the air raid siren went we used to go, in fact I had a bed and slept down there with my cousins most nights. During the Manchester blitz a bomb fell at the end of our road which prompted my parents to move to a house at the edge of and outlying town. We had just moved there and had not yet built a shelter when a single German bomber (lost we presumed) dropped a bomb. I was in bed with my mother as we heard the whistle of it dropping. I was terrified and was sure it was going to land on us. When it hit the ground the house rocked all the windows blew in but apart from the blast we were safe. The following morning I with one or two local kids went over to the crater it caused hunting for shrapnel. We all came away with a souvenir funny how resilient kids are. I was older than Sybil so had more experiences later in the war but these memories are all useful for her to draw on for her new book.