How Britain Kept Calm and Carried On (33 page)

My main memory of wartime was bath night. My mother had to bring in the tin bath – I think it was actually made of galvanized iron – from the backyard where it was
hung on a nail on the fence. Then it was filled with bucket after bucket of water that had been heated up in the copper. There were five of us kids, and me – being the smallest and youngest
– went in last. So you can imagine the state of the water, not to mention that it was only lukewarm by then. But the thing that really sticks in my mind is that the government had said that
no one should have more than five inches of water in their bath, to conserve both water and heating. Well, my eldest brother complained about this, saying that since five of us were being bathed in
the same water, then we were entitled to twenty-five inches. Then my father pointed out that it was extremely unlikely that an official would come snooping round demanding to see our bath night,
anyway. But my mother, bless her, stuck to her guns. ‘No,’ she said, ‘if Mr Churchill says that it’s only five inches, then five inches it will be.’ And that was that
until the end of the war.

Brian Hall, London

I was twelve when war broke out. At the time my grandmother lived with us and she was a real cantankerous old lady. There was hell to pay when she was told that she had to go
and collect her gas mask. She said to me: ‘What’s the point? Go and have a word with your mother. If we have to go to the shelter, there’s no gas laid on there anyway.’

Eileen Jones, Plymouth

It was a midsummer’s early evening – brilliant blue sky, still – and I remember looking up and seeing aircraft high in the sky. We had a lot of what we called
‘silverfish’ – little insects that used to crawl out of our hearth – and they reminded me of them. Silverfish, high in the blue sky. Then someone said that they were German
and all hell broke loose. The man next door had a rifle – I don’t know where from but I think he’d served in the First World War – and he was always bragging that it had
‘one up the spout’, ready for the invasion. So he went to fetch it. Well, by the time he’d returned, the aircraft had disappeared. It was probably relief – relief that we
hadn’t been bombed, but more relief that the old man hadn’t fired his ancient-looking rifle – but everyone in the street fell about laughing. All except the old man, that is. He
stormed off back into his house, shouting: ‘If that’s your attitude, you can fight your own bloody war!’

Ray Smith, Birmingham

One of our neighbours plonked herself down in our house while the bomb-disposal men were dealing with a UXB right outside. She said to my brother: ‘Go easy on that jam.
There’s a war on!’ It was hard to ignore with an unexploded bomb in the street outside.

Once, in Victoria Street in London, I saw two ducks happily swimming around an emergency water tank in a bombed-out building. They’d flown in from St James’s Park.

June Buckle, London

I was seven years old at the outbreak of war, living in Rochester, near Rochester Airport that was being used by the RAF as a flying training school. We were directly in line
for dogfights, stray bombs and anything else that the Germans wanted to drop on us. One afternoon the siren went and we fled to the shelter, accompanied by a neighbour who was on her own. We shut
the door just as the sound of the approaching bombers grew louder. Next minute there was a tremendous explosion and the door was blown off. A rush of hot air seemed to come in and we were all
hurled into a heap at the back of the shelter. When we eventually recovered, all very shaken, we crawled outside to have a look. A bomb had fallen in the middle of the road and the blast had blown
in the front windows, doors etc. The curtains had been torn to shreds and most of the furniture ruined by the flying glass. My mother and neighbour stood speechless, obviously upset. A house four
doors up was in ruins, and another bomb had fallen further up the road. The first person on the scene arrived, the local ARP warden, who told my mother off for not being still in the shelter as the
all-clear hadn’t gone. In no time at all, the street was full of council workers and officials. There was no gas or water – they’d turned it off. My mother and neighbour whose
house had suffered a similar fate were upset, naturally, and when a large van of WVS ladies arrived and began brandishing kettles and teapots, my mother asked if we could have a cup of tea.
‘It’s not for you,’ came the reply, ‘we have to serve the men filling in the hole first.’ And not a cup of tea did we get until every man had been served. Talk about
helping the needy . . .

Margaret Pack, Maidstone

I always think I was lucky because during the war we lived in Kent, right under the Battle of Britain. That might sound strange if it came from an adult, but we were just kids.
I suppose we spent more time searching around bomb sites, and places where aircraft had crashed, than anywhere else. In the long summer holidays it was great fun. We used to collect shrapnel and
anything else we could find and swap it for other things like sweets – which were obviously in short supply – or perhaps even a football, if you had enough ‘currency’.
Because that is what all these spoils of war were – currency. Sometimes, you’d just swap what you had for a ‘better’ bit of shrapnel to build up your collection.

Anyway, one day my brother was setting off for work and I was still in bed, and he called up to me that a German plane had been damaged that night and that part of its engine was lying in our
front garden. I’d never moved so fast. I got dressed as quickly as I could and raced downstairs. There was no sign of anything in our garden. He was pulling my leg. That was the thing, though
– we lived right in the thick of it and we just made a joke of it all. It was just part of our lives.

Len Johnson, London

We were sitting in the air-raid shelter one night. The sirens had sounded but there was no sign of the bombers yet. My parents were discussing the chap down the road who had a
bit of a reputation with the ladies. I was only about nine years old and wasn’t involved in the conversation but children pick up on these things. Anyway, they were pulling him to pieces when
my elder brother – he’d be about fifteen at the time – piped up and said: ‘I know why he only goes out with blondes.’

Both my parents stopped talking and just stared at him. Then he said: ‘It’s because he’s afraid of the blackout.’ My parents didn’t know whether to laugh or tell
him off. He told me later that he’d heard the comedian Max Miller crack the joke on the wireless.