What is your name?

Joan

When were you born?

31st October, 1925.

Can you tell me where were you living when war broke out?

In Hall Green, Birmingham.

Have you any memories of that day?

Yes, absolutely, yes vivid. We heard it on the radio at eleven o’clock and Mr Chamberlain said that we were at war and just at the back of us was a barrage balloon and as he was talking this barrage balloon went up. I always remember that ever so clearly.

When you say we?

The family yes, my mother and father and two sisters.

Can you remember anyone’s reaction to that news?

I suppose we were expecting it so that was it. I think sort of heroic really we were going to defend people I think that was really it as much as anything yes.

Any particular memories of rationing?

Well you know we both (with husband) tried to think what we used to eat and we both can’t think how our mothers used to feed us because the rations were so tiny. One egg a week, bacon I don’t think there was much bacon. Ooh butter about two ounces that was about ten ounces and my mother, before the war used to have two and a half pounds of butter so she didn’t know where to start. So I just don’t know, I don’t know what we used to eat, I do wonder. She used to grow a lot of things. We had a big garden and she grew quite a lot of vegetables and she used to bottle tomatoes and all kinds of things like that so I suppose we just had those and sorted it out from there. And then this meat perhaps twice a week if we were lucky I should imagine I don’t think there was much more.

Can you remember, because you were a teenager then, can you remember going hungry?

No but my sister-in-law, I’m only tiny so I had enough but my sister in law was a tall girl and she was a teenager and she said she was always hungry. All, you know all when she was growing up because there was never enough food. So I was alright because as I say I was only small anyway so it didn’t sort of matter that much to me.

That was unusual Mum doing the garden I thought Dads normally did the garden.

No me Mum was the gardener. Me Dad was in the fire service the AFS. He went through all the blitz an then he found out that if he got killed when he’d gone through it all there was no pension for my mother so he decided he’d come out of that and he went into the Home Guard and he used to be on the Ack-Ack guns.

This was in Birmingham?

Yes, yes.

What were your memories of the bombing in Birmingham when you were growing up, was it bad?

Yes, yes very bad but we lived on the outskirts so we were not so bad but when you went to work …in the beginning you never knew in the beginning you never knew what was going to be. You wouldn’t get there because you’d go all round because there’d be, you know unexploded bombs. A lot of it was bombed because all Birmingham was bombed all the centre was blown up you see. We had to start again after the war and you came home in the dark, well I was only just fourteen and it was pitch black and the buses all had shields on their lights so there was only a little tiny bit. It was a bit…. You didn’t sort of feel threatened which was a bit strange really but I suppose we didn’t think about it.

What about things like the blackout. What was the blackout all about?

Well if you had a glimmer of light you were in trouble because the bombers might see us. So you had all blackout curtains, you had to have no cracks anywhere and if you had to open the door you had to put all the lights out. Then my father as I say he used to have to go off if the sirens went they went off to the AFS station you see. He came one day and he said, ‘oh it was awful’ he said, ‘we went to the city’, and I think there was a six storey car showroom and he said, ‘All these beautiful cars were hurling through the, you know from the top floors’. He said, ‘What a waste!’ He used to smell, his clothing used to smell of smoke and all that because he’d have to go all night and then he’d come and then he’d have to go to work in the daytime.

So that was voluntary thing he used to do then?

Yes, oh yes. I think they started just before the war, AFS. (Auxiliary Fire Service)

Did he have to go to, obviously Birmingham itself was badly bombed, but did he have to go to Coventry for example when Coventry was….?

No, no because they were too busy in Birmingham they had to look after Birmingham they couldn’t send him there. But we could see, if it was very bad in Coventry we could see the red glow in the sky because that was all very badly bombed you see, a lot of factories I suppose. We had factories but our city centre was blown up all of it.

But you were too old to be evacuated were you?

Yes because I’d just about, I left, I finished in July and I didn’t ever go back to school because that was it. I was going to leave anyway in October you see so that was it I didn’t go back. But my sisters wouldn’t be evacuated they said that if we have to die then we will die together. So we had an Anderson shelter in the garden and my Dad said, ‘Now I was in the trenches so we have to have it four feet six deep.’ So he dug this blinking thing and we had to go down there every night and we just went to bed because we couldn’t be bothered getting up in the middle of the night and anyway eventually the ruddy thing filled up with water. So we used to have a pump on it to pump the water out but we still went down there! It was funny, it just filled up with water! There was a film later Alf Garnet in the film that happened to him and of course he went in the shelter and it was full of water and it was just like ours, it’s really funny.

How big was this shelter? Not very big?

Oh no, what would they be? About six foot, I suppose about six foot deep by about four or five, it wasn’t much more than that was it? Then there was this sort of door like…. Must have been a door or a curtain or something on it mustn’t we? Because yours was different….

Maurice: It had earth on the top.

Yes corrugated iron wasn’t it and you filled it up with earth didn’t you.

You had bunks in there did you?

Yes, yes. Four bunks, so me mother was on the bottom one and me sisters were only small, one was about, what would she be? About nine I should think and the other one was about seven. They were only small so they slept one each end on the bottom and then I had a top one and my father had a top one. When he was there, I mean full time he wasn’t there because he was out in….. Sometimes if it was too bad we stayed indoors, we slept downstairs and my mother was so scared one night she just was shaking, she was frightened to death because she was so scared about what was going to happen to the kids I suppose.

But no bombs ever came near you?

Yes we had an incendiary bomb on the house. But they managed to, we had eaves, you know a house with eaves and it went between the two eaves and they did manage to get it down and drop into some sand and put it out. Then just across they had an unexploded bomb and they made the people go out of the house and they blew it up and mother said, ‘Ooh!’ she said, ‘They’ve blown the chickens up!’ But it wasn’t, it was a feather bed!

The other thing I’ve got down here is ‘make do and mend’, just tell me?

What was make do and mend? Well, we had clothing coupons and we didn’t have very many you see so you darned your underwear because you… so you could have a new frock you never had one very often. And we used to, I’m trying to think, we made underwear out of parachute silk, whether they were damaged ones I don’t really know. Anyway we used to use parachute silk. We made everything because we had to. I don’t really know….

By hand so it wasn’t by sewing machines?

Oh yes because we had machines anyway. My mother had a machine, a hand machine, Singer, yes. It belonged to heraunt who had it in the First World War so it was old then, twenty odd…. Thirty years old.

So it was all about patching things up and actually making your own clothes?

And you’d knit and darn and your stockings you mended the ladders if you had a ladder in your stocking. You’d put it over a glass like that and then you picked it up and then some shops used to do it for you. They’d mend your stockings for you as well. Then I thought afterwards, my mother, who was doing all sorts of silly things, have you heard of Permanganate of Potash which was a sort of stain. Well she decided she’d brown her legs because she’d got no stockings you see. So she made it too strong and it came out like mahogany colour and she had to scrub it off with Vim! I can see her now, her legs were ever so sore. They were dark brown. Then you’d colour your legs with gravy browning and all sorts of funny things, then draw a line up the back if you’d got no stockings in the summer, you had to.

It was a difficult age for you as a kid because nowadays….

My teenage was nothing because we didn’t have anything. No food, not a lot of food then I thought after when after, when. Let me think…. 1942 I think it was they made young people, I was sixteen by then and we had to join a pre-service Corps. To be trained for the forces and you had to, they came out. You didn’t say, ‘I’m not going’, you had to go. We did, you know marching and all that sort of thing and cookery and um, I’m trying to think what else we did, we did all kinds of things.

Was this locally based?

Yes, that was only down the road, just down the road.

I think we talked about ‘Dig for Victory’ and all that. Entertainments, I’m just thinking of you and comparing you with a teenager today. It’s a time when you want to look good when you want to get out with yourmates. What did you do for entertainment?

Well I was going to say first of all we didn’t have any because we had to sit down the shelter for, how long would you say, six, twelve months. 1940 wasn’t it? Yes I suppose about a year so that was nothing was it, nothing then. Then there used to be a lot of church groups and things like that. Youth clubs and that sort of thing, much more church than these days and they used to run youth clubs and things like that. We went dancing as well from being about seventeen I suppose so all that… it just started again you see the cinemas opened and all the things just went on as much as before.

The real Blitz was about 1941 wasn’t it?

Yes, 1940, ’41, yes.

Any particular memories of dances as a teenage girl?

Laughs! Well no not really just like as we do it to this day. WE still go dancing.

What were you dancing to?

Oooh Glen Miller and all that sort.

But Birmingham had its own kind of big bands and all that kind of thing. Did you go to Kings Heath which would have had what we call night-clubs?

Well it wouldn’t be night because it wouldn’t be so late, yes the Dance Halls had, it wasn’t piped music it was all, you know proper music, you know. Musicians, always.

Looking back on it…. oh the other thing was any particular memories of the day the war ended, VE Day, any particular memories of that?

Do you know that’s a bit vague because there was two. The VE Day and the VJ Day and they get a bit muddled up. I think we went to the city I’m almost sure we did on VE Day. But I can’t remember what we did in the evening, I really can’t, I’ve tried to think. VJ Day we went to a Dance because I can remember and it was very hot, ever so hot because I can remember that quite clearly. But I can’t remember, I asked my sister in law as well and she couldn’t really remember but I’m sure we went to the city and I mean it was quite exciting because people were… We used to get, the King and Queen come once to parade around and go through the streets seeing them. They must have come to boost us I suppose.

I’ve heard other people who were like you, teenagers during the war actually saying it was almost like the happiest time of their life, it was a really exciting time to be alive.

Yes it probably was in some ways because you, we didn’t think that we were going to lose, it didn’t occur to us that we might lose. We just took it for granted that we’d win and we used to listen to Hitler and Lord Hawhaw and everybody else because there was no television, a world without television!

What about the Americans, did you have much contact with the Americans?

No they were, a lot of those were in Blackpool because we did go to Blackpool in the war on holiday and there were a lot in the dances there.

Not many around Birmingham?

No, no.

Any other particular memories?

I don’t think so, it’s the ‘make do and mend’ that I remember the most and to this day we never wasted any food. We don’t to this day. You hear other people say that because you never wasted anything, you couldn’t. We got married in 1951 and everything was still rationed and was rationed a lot of it until ’54. So it was rationed from, well fourteen, fifteen years.

During this time of rationing you say you had to have what was there and everything. What was the worst thing? What for you was the worst thing you ate to keep from being hungry, what was the worst thing?

I didn’t eat rabbit, I never ate rabbit and I still don’t eat it and I didn’t then either. No, perhaps we got chickens, I don’t know. I suppose we must have done from somewhere, we probably did, perhaps somebody used to give us some, I don’t know.

That was lovely, thank you very much indeed.