The banshee howl of the siren woke me what time was it? —probably just after dawn.
The all clear usually sounded off about half an hour after the bomber was no longer heard. I got up at 7.30 and wanted to see what the latest damage to the house was. We had sticky tape covering all the windows but that didn‘t stop the glass breaking. The first thing to check—did we have gas, water and electric- ity? A month ago we were without gas for a week, without elec- tricity for 2 days and no water for 2 days —not very pleasant at all. If there was gas, we would have breakfast, usually porridge or toast. Our weekly ration then was: butter 4oz / bacon 4oz / sugar 8oz / tea 2oz / ham 8oz / cheese 2 oz / milk 3 pints / sweets 3oz / eggs I packet dried / biscuits —on points / meat 4Opence (now l4p.)/ No bananas / no imported fresh/tinned fruit. Clothes 66points per year/suit 26 and shoes 6 points not a lot to live on but enough to survive! As my father had a small ration of petrol weekly, we sometime could do a swap for some eggs or 1/2pound butter from a farm.., what bliss!!!
After breakfast I got on my bike to cycle from Ilford to school, Royal Liberty, in Gidea Park about 7miles or so. School time was 9am to 3.3Opm and lunch 12noon to 1pm. At lunch- time, if my pals and I did not have school dinner, we‘d cycle into Romford to the British Restaurant in the Market Place near the old Laurie Cinema at the top end. Here we‘d got a meal for 6d or 8d (now 2 V2 or 3 pence), meal wasn‘t much good but it was a change.
Quite often during mid-morning the air raid siren would wail and we would all go to the semi-underground shelter in the football field. The best bit was watching the vapour trails of the aircraft above and sometimes hear the ma- chine guns, or saw a plane falling, or a para- chute wafting down. Being near Hornchurch, we also saw the fighters coming back to refuel, some trailing smoke banging and bashing noises. At 3.3Opm we were off home. The rou- tine never varied. Put bike in the garage, wash hands, go straight down the garden to our Anderson shelter (the 6‖6‘inches tall oblong corrugated sheet shelter 2/3d buried with earth on top) outside the front square opening. We
built a little porch in which stood our paraf- fin primus camp- ing stove where we cooked our meals. Mom did a marvellous job preparing and cooking under such circum- stances. We had to get every thing done quickly depending on the time of sunset and the time the air raid siren would go off. Some- times in December-January, the raids would start at 4.3Opm until 7.3Oam. In spring more likely 6.3Opm to 6.3Oam.
33 During the War
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