A child's life in WW2
I come from Coventry, but we moved to Warwick, so I went to school there, to Westgate School. It had shelters in the playground, and they were still there, years and years after the war. I can remember queueing at Jones 'shop in Market Square when oranges and bananas came back after the war.
When they were bombing Coventry, you never where you would sleep that night. We had an Anderson shelter in the garden, but invariably, you never went to bed. We went under the stairs. They brought in shelters so you could go under your kitchen table, - they were like a metal cage that fitted under the table.
My Dad was an ARP warden. There were 4 bombs in Warwick. Everybody had a gas mask, even children. You always had to have your gas mask with you. At school we had gas- mask drill, like Fire Drill, to make sure we knew what to do. Schools were checked to make sure they did the drills. For babies there was a special thing, like a box. They had to be put in it, to protect them. My baby brother had one, but he hated it and he used to scream if he was put in it. There were ration books for every member of the family, even babies. They were different colours for different things. Children's were green.
There was orange juice from the clinic, and powdered milk in tins. And powdered eggs. You couldn't buy anything without a ration book. They were different colours for different things -clothes, food. After the cathedral was bombed, they made a cross of Nails from the burnt timbers in the ruins. It's still there. They also made things from other bits of the things like the broken glass. I had a necklace/cross made from glass from the ruins. I had it for years but I don't know where it is now.
Everybody did Dig for Victory. They dug up Bablake School Sports Fields to grow veg. I don't remember Pig Bins, but There were "Pig Clubs". Some people kept a pig on their allotment. There were a lot of evacuees. Schools changed when they came. We had school in the mornings and they had school to themselves in the afternoons, right up until teatime. Some evacuees in Warwick led their host families a terrible dance!
