by Tessa Arlen
The Dig for Victory campaign encouraged people with gardens to turn them over to growing their own fruit and vegetables, and people who lived in the country could shoot game for the dining room table, and fish for trout. As the war progressed even wild caught rabbit grew scarce.
Restaurants were prevented from serving more than three courses for dinner, which was considered restrictive when a celebratory evening out in a restaurant before the war consisted of at least five courses: hors d’oeuvre, soup, fish, game or meat, and pudding. Restaurants could only charge a maximum price of five-shillings for the meal itself, except for luxury hotels and clubs who were quick to add on all sorts of extras, especially if they offered a cabaret, or a band for dancing, not to mention a hefty price tag for a bottle of wine.
Coupons were required for even the simplest needs: clothing, fuel, and soap were in short supply even if people saved their coupons. The paper shortage referred to in Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders, when Poppy’s book is accepted by a publisher but could not be printed due to the restrictions on paper use is a perfect example of how scarce paper had become! Radio broadcast news became popular with the drop in newspaper production and continues on to this day.
As for beer, it was considered essential to the morale of both troops and civilians, so it was never rationed—and the government actively encouraged women to drink beer to help them cope with life on the Home Front and its many deprivations.
For more on how Britain managed their food resources during World War II, I recommend visiting cooksinfo.com/british -wartime-food/.
THE FRIENDLY INVASION
In the late spring of 1942, when America joined in the war against Germany, the press called the arrival of the American armed forces, in Britain, the Friendly Invasion. British farmlands were requisitioned to build new airfields, and over 2 million American Army Air Force servicemen were stationed at aerodromes all over the United Kingdom. The arrival of US servicemen had considerable cultural impact on a population deprived by three years of war. Jitterbugging to the music of Glen Miller and, at the time, exotic and unknown foods such as peanut butter, Coca Cola, hot dogs, and chewing gum were gratefully welcomed by a country that had struggled for years on strict food rationing. Everything American became popular: the slang they used, the food they ate, the music they enjoyed, and the way they danced, especially for young British women whose boyfriends were fighting overseas.
The Americans had heard about “jolly old England,” but none of them were prepared for the shortage, or lack, of life’s basic necessities such as hot water, electricity, gasoline, and coal. They were surprised at how scruffy England’s country towns looked and by the equally shabby population of “Old Blighty” who had suffered the rigors of “mend and make do” until there was little left to mend. The Brits knew American culture, through movies, as the land of cowboys and Hollywood, which hardly prepared them for young men of Italian, Polish, German, and Irish descent from America’s large commercial and industrial cities.
The different expressions used by both cultures for what the British knew as car bonnets—car hoods; car trunks—car boots; jam—jelly; biscuits—cookies were many and confusing, but most Brits accepted the arrival of their allies with open arms. So much so in fact that by the end of the war in Europe forty-thousand women from the East Anglian counties of Britain alone followed their boyfriends and husbands back to the US in two cruise liners requisitioned for their journey.
The most confusing cultural habit that America introduced to wartime Britain was segregation, which in a country with a population of only ten thousand African and Caribbean people, was both puzzling and unacceptable. Nevertheless, the American Army Air Force designated some British market towns for white servicemen only, while others had alternate days for black and white serviceman.
CRIME
From blackouts to blitzed homes, the war years represented a new opportunity for the criminally inclined. The blackout and the bombs were the most obvious factors, and murder, rape, robbery, burglary, and theft all flourished in the dark and the chaos. But there were other reasons for this leap in criminal activity. The war brought new restrictions and regulations, which many people chose to break or circumvent for gain. Rationing offered huge opportunities to fraudsters, forgers, and thieves and created a vibrant black market while law enforcement lost one third of its officers and manpower to the armed services.
With cities and towns plunged into darkness every night, killers had a field day. A young airman, Gordon Cummins, was nicknamed “the Blackout Ripper” and roamed the bomb-ravaged streets of London in search of young women to murder and mutilate. He killed at least four between 1941 and 1942 before he was caught and became an early victim of the infamous British hangman Albert Pierrepoint.
TESSA ARLEN was born in Singapore, the daughter of a British diplomat; she has lived in Egypt, Germany, the Persian Gulf, China, and India. An Englishwoman married to an American, Tessa lives on the West Coast with her family and two corgis.
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