Contributor: Gareth Owen

I was 5 years old in 1939, the eldest of three, my brother having been born in the same year. Consequently my mother had no wartime occupation other than caring for her young family. My father was in a reserved occupation which involved building aircraft hangars and the Mulberry Harbour.

We lived on the A36 Southampton to Salisbury road at Testwood which is about 10 miles west of Southampton. It was semi rural in those days and far enough from the city for us not to be evacuated.

My early school years were very scrappy being interrupted by air raid warnings and interludes in the school air raid shelters. Gas masks were carried as a matter of course and I can’t remember any of us thinking there was anything odd in our situation of living in wartime Britain. I hated gas mask practise as mine always made a noise when I breathed out, which resulted in a ticking off by the teacher. No doubt I hadn’t fitted it on properly. Our favourite pastime was going outside after a raid and picking up bits of shrapnel, or “shrappie” as we called it, and taking it to school for comparison with the other collectors.

We had a few stray bombs dropping around the area, one of which blew our front windows out onto the lawn. No glass was broken and my father just picked them up and fixed them back in place. My aunt, who was staying with us at one stage, was standing in the open front doorway watching an air raid when the blast from a bomb blew her to the top of the stairs. Dad made an air raid shelter for us in the back garden and I clearly remember mum and we children being there during a daylight raid on Southampton and mum making us pray for dad who was working in the docks at the time. He cycled to work as no one had cars in those days, and used to wear the empty enamel pie dish mum had cooked his lunch in as a helmet if there was a raid.

We had a gang of Italian POW’s near our home working on the canal and maintaining the river Test. They wore special POW uniforms which had square or round patches of a different colour on them so they could be seen from a distance. They were always laughing and singing and loved having we children around. One POW fashioned a little signet ring for my young sister from a silver 3 pence piece with the monarch’s head as the signet. They shared their bread and cake with us, and although they must have had an overseer, we were allowed to “fraternise” with them. There was just one German POW who kept himself apart from the Italians. We used to see him exercising the local farmer’s hunter around the fields at the back of our garden. He stayed on after the war marrying a local girl.

We had a long back garden where dad grew fruit and vegetables and mum had hens, but sweets and other luxuries were non existent. Food such as sugar, cheese and butter were very strictly rationed, and I am thankful for that today as I still have my own teeth and lead a very healthy and active life. I remember mum hearing on the grapevine one day that a local grocery store had a supply of tinned baked beans in stock, and I was sent hot foot with the ration book to join a long queue for one tin of beans! Apart from the lack of meat in our diet as dad was given the lion’s share, we had good home cooked sustainable meals supplemented by dried egg, dried apple rings and of course, tinned Spam! We had an unexpected consignment of bananas in Southampton at one time and when my little brother saw his first banana he tried to eat it with the skin on and mum had to show him how to peel it. My sister and I remembered bananas so had no trouble in that direction.
Somehow or other, no doubt through the great courage of the merchant navy men, we always had a ration of dried fruit for Christmas cakes and puddings. I remember mum icing the cake and using a tiny drop of red and green ink to colour the trimming on the icing.

As to toys, there was no shortage at all for us. Necessity being the mother of invention there was always a relative, or one of dad’s workmates who could sew, use a saw or had grown up children who passed their toys on. We girls had a doll’s wooden cot each one Christmas, then later a doll’s wooden cradle. We always had rag dolls, and one Christmas my father managed to acquire a second hand Hornby train set for my brother which a workmate’s son had outgrown. We had a disused mangle at the back of the house and one of the rollers ended up as the engine for a wooden train.  My sister and I had a huge second hand doll’s house which our aunt acquired for us.

So despite home made and second hand toys we never felt deprived during those grim years, and had a very happy childhood. Our pastimes were spent walking in the countryside picking wild flowers and swimming in the river Test. It was a TV, mobile ‘phone free period in our lives, so much of our entertainment was in making use of our surroundings.

When the Americans eventually entered the war I saw for the first time in my life people of a different colour from myself. The black GI’s were such a novelty they were snapped up like hot cakes and taken home to meet mum and dad. I met one such gentleman who had been taken home by the older sister of a school friend and we were invited to meet him. I can see him now, a quiet black gentleman named Austin looking very smart in his GI uniform sitting at a table playing cards with we grubby little white kids who gazed at him in awe. With hindsight it must have been such a culture shock for him, and I often wonder if he survived Omaha beach. A few more luxuries came our way with the arrival of the Americans in the shape of slabs of chocolate and packets of Lifesaver sweets thrown from the backs of trucks. They were the “got any gum chum” days.

I mentioned earlier we lived on the A36 Salisbury road and prior to the push for D-Day there were endless convoys of troops passing our gate. When the lorries stopped for a rest the soldiers would sit along the ditches outside the houses. We would take them jugs of tea, but we never knew at that stage what was in store for us or what danger those men were to face or if any of them ever saw England again.

Anne Biffin