by Mike Brown
Early in the war the use of hand-bells and whistles, standard for teachers on playground duty, was banned (hand-bells were part of the poison gas warning system, and whistles to warn of falling incendiary bombs). Another big change was in holidays. It was quite normal for schools to work through to mid-August and then have just two weeks’s summer holidays, but to get ten weeks’s holiday at Christmas! This was to save fuel needed for lighting and heating. June Fidler from Peckham tells of other shortages:
With all the shortages the exercise books were cut in half with a guillotine or whatever and we had half of one each, they did the same with the pencils. We normally had to write with a dip pen using ink which a class monitor mixed up from powder, it was horrible stuff, but it ran out so we had to do all our writing with our half-pencils. And the textbooks, what there were of them, four or five of us had to share, but I hear it’s the same today, so some things don’t change.
Schools with cellars put them to use as air-raid shelters. Others either had purpose-built air-raid shelters in the grounds, or converted a ground-floor room to a shelter by having all its windows bricked up. Air-raid practices were common, as were gas mask practices. Here is a report from 1941: ‘ “Run, rabbits, run,” calls the teacher, and instantly some 20 or 30 little people disappear, leaving no signs of their presence but an odd foot or two sticking out from beneath the desks. No, it is not a new game for the infants’s school: at least, it may be a game for the children, but it is something more than that – it is practice in taking cover against sudden air attack.’
Most raids were at night, but there were also many in daylight, especially during the first year of the war, and lessons would be disrupted as everyone filed down to the shelter. At first it was thought that the raids would be over very quickly, but in fact warnings often lasted for several hours, so teachers had to think up ways to stop the children becoming bored and restless. Community singing was the most obvious distraction, to which were added story-telling, guessing games such as ‘I Spy’, charades and recitations. Sometimes a school would put on a show with each class taking its turn in entertaining the others: scenes from plays, music solos. As the war went on, shelters became better equipped with lights and heating and some lessons could be carried on there.
Schools were often hit, although with most of the bombing happening at night there were few casualties. The results of daytime raids, however, could be awful: at lunchtime on Wednesday 20 January 1943 a Focke Wulf 190 fighter-bomber, one of a group carrying out a tip-and-run raid, dropped its 1,100-pound (500 kg) bomb on Sandhurst Road School in Catford. No sirens were sounded. Teachers, hearing the plane circling overhead, had begun to lead the children down into the shelters. The bomb went through the wall of the school and exploded about a minute later in the dining hall, demolishing the centre of the building. Being lunchtime, many children were in the hall, and it was here that the casualties were at their highest – in all, thirty-eight children and six teachers were killed. The headteacher, Margaret Clarke, later said: ‘The only question the children were asking was “How can I help, Miss?” They took home the younger ones, tore up their clothing to bind the injuries and even helped in the rescue work – a grim job for youngsters of 14 and 15.’
When an LCC nursery school was destroyed by an incendiary bomb, the children were luckily not there at the time. The school was later evacuated to the village of Crockham Hill in Kent where, on the morning of Friday 30 June 1944, it received a direct hit from a flying bomb. Twenty-two of the thirty children and eight of the eleven members of staff were killed. It is a chilling example of the devastation caused by these weapons that the last bodies were not recovered until two days after the incident.
Overall, the effects on children’s education cannot be understated. D.J. Ryall’s experience was typical: ‘Due to the war my year did not complete their education past 16 although we all intended to stay on ’til 18. I left from Lingfield aged 15½ in 1940.’ The disruption was not always unwelcome, Iris Smith explains: ‘I did my school certificate during the war. We had done our mock certificates before and I had done quite well – I kept hoping the sirens would go – if they went while we were taking it they would have accepted our mock marks and I would have passed – but there wasn’t a sound.’
FIVE
Shortages
One of Britain’s great advantages in time of war is that the British Isles are exactly that – islands. This makes invasion far more difficult. But it also has a drawback: most of the food and raw materials that Britain consumes have to be imported by sea from other countries. In 1939, like an army laying siege to a castle in a medieval war, Germany put Britain under siege, using U-boats to sink merchant ships bringing in food, oil, petrol, wood, and many other vital materials. Losses were huge – over half of all the British merchant ships at the beginning of the war had been sunk by the end of it, and Britain came closer to losing the war to the U-boats than in any other way.
The situation was made worse by the need for vast amounts of material for the war effort. Thousands of aircraft, tanks, ships and guns had to be manufactured and millions of tons of steel were required, as well as rubber, oil and petrol. And the soldiers, sailors and airmen needed hundreds of thousands of uniforms, stitched from miles of cloth.
Scarce materials had to be conserved, so the government introduced a series of special measures. Petrol was a particular problem and the use of private cars was drastically cut back. Ration coupons for petrol were available solely to those using their cars for war work. Other materials soon followed: rationing was introduced first for food, later for clothes, and even for furniture. Besides rationing, the government introduced other methods of saving scarce materials, campaigning to cut down on the unnecessary use of goods. Slogans such as: ‘Is your journey really necessary?’ became catch-phrases. A cartoon character, the squanderbug – a kind of large beetle, with Hitler’s hair – was shown encouraging people to buy things they did not need.
Shortage signs were seen everywhere: ‘No sweets’, ‘No cigarettes’ and, outside pubs, ‘No beer’, were common sights. Another cartoon character appeared; answering to the name of Chad, he was drawn everywhere peering over a wall, with a question mark over his head and the question ‘Wot, no . . . ?’ The missing word could be any one of a thousand things.
Mike Bree from Cornwall:
The whole thing started slowly (our first Christmas we hardly saw a difference – they did allow us that!), then gathered momentum until the ‘darkest days’ – and then the ‘shortages’ went from bad to worse as the things we had started the war with – clothes, household goods, etc. – wore out, were broken or lost, or were taken from us by the Luftwaffe, or by our own government, by regulation or by appealing for ‘the war effort’. Waste of all kinds was strongly discouraged, every bit of metal, glass, cardboard, wood, rubber, wool, everything, was vital. Even our town hall had to lose its courtyard railings, as did so many public and private buildings – there was hell to pay when they were found years later, rusting and forgotten in railway sidings.
People had to make things last, but the longer the war went on the more worn out things became. Vivien Hatton remembers a trip to an ice-rink near the end of the war: ‘We had to borrow the skates from the rink. They had holes in!’
SIX
The Food Front
DIG FOR VICTORY
To cut down on the need for imports every inch of space was used to grow food, even the moat around the Tower of London; some tennis courts and even cricket pitches were ploughed up. People were encouraged to ‘Dig for Victory’, and this was an activity in which children could be particularly useful. Often children would take over some part of their garden for vegetable growing; even the earth covering the Anderson shelter was used for growing food.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries issued a series of ‘Dig for Victory’ leaflets, giving tips not only on growing vegetables, but also on preserving food, making jam, etc.
RATIONING
The pre-war government had created a Food Department in 1939, with the threat of war in mind, and in September of that year the National Register was set up to keep track of the population. Using this information, the government supplied everyone with a ration book. Because it was felt that different groups of people needed different types or amounts of food – for instance, children received orange juice and cod liver oil, and younger children got extra milk – there were several different ration books. The main types were the Adult book, which was a buff colour, the Baby’s book, which was green, and the Junior book, which was blue. On 1 November 1939, it was announced that butter and bacon (or ham) were to become the first goods to be put ‘on the ration’: 4 ounces of each per person per week, beginning on 8 January 1940. At the end of December 1939 the government further announced that sugar was also to be rationed – 12 ounces a week. In March 1940 meat became rationed, not by amount, but by value: 1s 10d (9p) worth per person per week. In May the production of non-essential consumer goods was restricted. By now the Food Department had become the Ministry of Food (the MoF), under Lord Woolton, who gave his name to the Woolton Pie (p. 50).
By Christmas 1940, tea, that great British staple, had been rationed to 2 ounces a week, and the sugar ration was cut to 8 ounces. Worse, it was announced that after Christmas there would be no more bananas, and no fresh or tinned fruit would be imported, except a few oranges, as the shipping space was so badly needed for the war effort.
In January 1941 the value of the meat ration was dropped: first to 1s 6d (7.5p), then to 1s 2d (6p), and again in June to 1s (5p). It is said that Winston Churchill enquired why people were complaining about the size of the meat ration; when shown it he remarked that it would be quite enough for him – he thought it was the amount for one meal, it was actually a week’s worth! Jam, marmalade, syrup and treacle went on the ration from 17 March 1941 at 8 ounces per person. Cheese was next: in May the weekly ration was set at 1 ounce, which was increased to 2 ounces from the end of June (registered vegetarians were entitled to extra cheese instead of meat). In July the sugar ration was doubled for a month to encourage people to make their own jam using the large amount of fruit available at that time of the year; children helped with the picking. Later, shortages led to the introduction of milk rationing.
In July 1942 the tea ration for under-5s was abolished, but for most children the worst blow came later that month when sweets were rationed; everyone was allowed 2 ounces a week, raised in August to 3 ounces, and in the same month biscuits were put on points, as were syrup and treacle. An element of choice was introduced. As well as the coupons for specified rationed goods, each ration book contained a number of points coupons. While some items of food were ‘put on points’, the points coupons could be used to buy any items on points. Even before rationing, sweets had been hard to get. A letter from Alan Miles (14 August 1941) ‘I am thankful for the sweets [you sent] as you can’t get a sweet in Hartland for any money.’ June Fidler: ‘We got 2 ounces of sweets a week on rations – we used to buy the smallest sweets we could, pear drops and so on, so that you got a lot of them.’ Special ration-sized chocolate bars were produced, and Barratts introduced the Ration Bag, ‘containing sweets, nuts, pop-corn, etc.’; this later became the Jamboree bag. Shortages of milk meant that milk chocolate was difficult to get – for instance, Rowntrees produced a plain chocolate Kit-Kat in a blue wrapper. Children tried various ways to get round the rationing. Derek Dimond describes one: ‘The worst thing was the shortage of sweets, we used to buy Victory V lozenges which were off rations.’ Other alternatives included ‘Imps’, tiny black lozenges which were extremely hot – they too were off rations.
In August 1942 the cheese ration was increased to 8 ounces. Ration books issued in June 1943 included personal points for sweets and chocolates. Barbara Courtney: ‘I remember we used to go to the shops to get our food rations, 2 ounces of this, 2 ounces of that, then we’d share them. You’d swap your sugar ration for sweets, jam for sugar, and so on.’
Bread was not rationed, and nor were some other foods, such as potatoes and other root vegetables, but they were not always available. News would soon be passed round when a shop had something unusual in and a queue would soon form – during the war queuing became almost a national pastime, and here, too, children could help, both by spotting queues and by saving Mum a place in them.
The Ministry of Food produced a great deal of material on how to make the rations stretch. There were recipe books, and a series of newspaper articles, entitled ‘Food Facts’, which would give tips on cooking in wartime. There was even a radio programme, The Kitchen Front, broadcast every morning from Tuesday to Friday at 8.15 am.
Imported fruit, such as peaches and grapes, became almost impossible to get, and even if they were available, prices were extremely high. In 1944 street markets were selling pineapples for 5 guineas (£5.25) each, grapes at 16s (80p) for 1 pound and peaches at 2s (10p) each. Charles Harris: ‘You never saw oranges. One Christmas, it must have been ’43 or ’44, Dad was in North Africa and he sent us a big basket of oranges. In those days the postman delivered on Christmas Day and they arrived Christmas morning. There were four really big ones – my two brothers, my sister and I had one each. My little brother was a baby – he had a green ration book, and with that you got orange juice.’
In Richmal Crompton’s William Carries On (published in 1942), William asks his long-suffering mother for a lemon:
‘Lemons?’ said Mrs. Brown as if she could hardly believe her ears. ‘Lemons? I hardly remember what they look like.’
‘There’s a picture of ’em in the ’cyclopaedia,’ said William helpfully.
‘I don’t think I even want to remember what they look like,’ said Mrs. Brown bitterly. ‘No, I’ve not seen one for weeks.’
‘If you wanted to get hold of one,’ said William, ‘how would you start?’
‘I shouldn’t,’ said Mrs. Brown. ‘I’ve given it up. After all, it’s no use breaking one’s heart over a lemon.’
‘But suppose you had to have one,’ said William, ‘what would you do?’
‘I shouldn’t do anything,’ said Mrs. Brown. ‘What with onions and eggs, and icing sugar and cream, I’ve just given it up. There’s nothing one can do.’
Although there were plenty of chickens in Britain when war broke out in 1939, the bulk of poultry feed was imported, making eggs hard to get. In the summer of 1942 powdered eggs were made available to domestic consumers. A packet, equivalent to twelve eggs, cost 1s 9d (9p). The Ministry of Food ‘War Cookery Leaflet No. 11’ was about powdered eggs, including instructions on ‘How to reconstitute dried egg’ – using one level tablespoonful of egg powder and two of water, ‘mix the egg and water and allow to stand for about five minutes until the powder has absorbed the moisture. Then work out any lumps with a wooden spoon, finally beating with a fork or whisk.’ The leaflet went on to give various recipes, such as scrambled eggs, omelettes and cake mixtures, as well as ‘English Monkey’ and ‘Mock Fried Egg’; these last two are reproduced below:
English Monkey
1 powdered egg
1 cup stale breadcrumbs 1 cup milk
half cup grated cheese
1 tablespoon margarine
half teaspoon salt
pepper
Soak the breadcrumbs in the milk. Melt the margarine in a pan, add the cheese and when melted add the soaked breadcrumbs and the egg (well beaten) and seasoning. Cook for three minutes. Spread on toast.
Mock Fried Egg
1 powdered egg
2 slices wheatmeal bread
salt and pepper
Beat the egg. Cut holes from the centre of each slice of bread with a scone cutter. Dip the slices quickly in water and fry one side until golden brown. Turn onto the other side, pour half the egg into the hole in each slice of the bread, cook until the bread is brown on the underneath side.
Early in February 1941 a standard wholemeal loaf, called the National Loaf was i
ntroduced. Far more of the wheat was used in making it, so there was less waste.
Several schemes were tried to make up for the shortage of meat. Sausages contained less and less real pork or beef; ‘It’s a mystery what’s in these sausages,’ says a character in the 1943 film, Millions like Us, ‘and I hope it’s not solved in my time!’ By that year, horsemeat, or horse flesh as it was known, was commonly available, though rarely popular; also widely hated was whalemeat, which became available in 1945. On the other hand the war introduced the British public to the American creation, Spam, tins of which were a great treat. Rabbit was popular, especially in the countryside. Although fish was widely used as an alternative to meat, sometimes it was also scarce. New types of fish were tried out with little success, the most famous of which was Snoek (pronounced snook), an Australian fish, widely considered to be inedible.
People were encouraged to keep animals for food, and not just in the country. Sylvie Stevenson from Chingford in London:
We had real eggs! We kept chickens, ducks, rabbits, and a goose, we kept them in the garage and in two sheds in the garden. We kept the rabbits for meat – there was one big rabbit called ‘Blackie’; his cage was by the door and I used to see him a lot – when they cooked him I just couldn’t eat my dinner – Mum was so cross. Dad bought the goose in about August, we were going to fatten it up for Christmas. He thought it was a male bird but it started laying eggs so we kept it, the eggs were lovely – they filled the whole frying pan! We had it for about two years until it stopped laying, so Dad killed it – I couldn’t eat that either. The ducks were a disaster, there must have been half a dozen of them, Dad didn’t clip their wings properly and they flew over the fence into next door’s garden, the French windows were open and they went in – the neighbours were furious!