As Time Goes By: Careless Talk
...There were posters with the captions ‘Turn that Light Out’, ’Lend a Hand on the Land – join the Womens Land Army’, and ‘Dig for Victory’. Allotments sprang up everywhere - in parks, recreation grounds and on open green spaces. The end of our garden had become a vegetable plot, and Mum kept chickens and rabbits. From time to time she would ask the milkman to come in to kill a chicken, and my cousin who worked in a butcher shop would deal with a rabbit when its time was up...
Eileen Perrin remembers in vivid detail events unfolding in London, and throughout Britain, in the early days of World War Two.
To read earlier episodes of Eileen's life story please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/as_time_goes_by/
In the war one of my main spare-time occupations was letter-writing. I believed that one of the greatest joys was to receive a letter and had many pen pals, but in 1940 was surprised and happy to hear again from Salvino Boffa in Malta, who was now training to be a doctor. We had started the correspondence whilst still at school. We were guarded, even in letters, bearing in mind the poster – ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’.
There had been conscription ever since war threatened in 1938, when the A.R.P.also began recruiting. My friend Joan’s Dad became an Air Raid Warden. In some areas of the country men had formed groups, arming themselves with shotguns, ready in case of invasion. In May 1940 Antony Eden appealed for volunteers to help defend the country. Then came the poster ‘Wanted for Home Defence Men 41 – 55’, and so Dad’s Army - the L.D.V. was formed. All over the country Local Defence Volunteers were organised and drilled and became an official force, proving their worth, keeping watch for enemy planes, and assisting in rescue work after air raids.
There were posters with the captions ‘Turn that Light Out’, ’Lend a Hand on the Land – join the Womens Land Army’, and ‘Dig for Victory’. Allotments sprang up everywhere - in parks, recreation grounds and on open green spaces. The end of our garden had become a vegetable plot, and Mum kept chickens and rabbits. From time to time she would ask the milkman to come in to kill a chicken, and my cousin who worked in a butcher shop would deal with a rabbit when its time was up.
Mum also worked in P.B.Cow, a local factory making rubber dinghies for the Forces.
All over the country in 1940 we were encouraged to run pig clubs. Large galvanised tubs with heavy lids, were placed in every street for the collection of our kitchen scraps.
We had a Pig club at Hazelwood, and a couple of the office boys helped with it, including Les Perrin – (now my husband). Although only seventeen, he was taught to drive the company car to be able to go into Watford to buy pig meal, or take the trailer with pigs to be slaughtered. He did not have to have a driving licence in those days. He drove up to London to fetch the weekly wages packets. A bit young to have that responsibility, but it must be remembered that then boys of twenty and twenty-one were Spitfire and Hurricane pilots.
For three days in March 1940 Plymouth docks and Devonport Naval base were bombed, followed in April by five days of strafing. France, Holland and Belgium capitulated.
On June 17th a hundred planes made a night raid on the east coast, including Southend-On-Sea, killing 12 people. Next day Churchill warned us that our country would be the next Hitler would try to take, and told us that we must brace ourselves to do our duty, saying that if the British Commonwealth should last a thousand years, it would still be said that ‘this was their finest hour’.
In one of the last weeks in June when I still worked in London, I saw scores of ANZAC troops in the Strand, and many Maoris among them. Then by July, living away from home for the first time in Hazelwood, a mansion in Kings Langley, taken over by Odhams Press, we worked from Monday to Friday, until 7pm, going home for weekends. In the early days we had to help with the washing up.
In the first week a local Fire Officer came to help us form a Fire Squad, as incendiary bombs were expected. The next week, given navy blue boiler suits, crawling on our hands and knees one at a time, we went through a smoke-filled shed, out in the grounds to put out an imaginary fire with a stirrup pump and a bucket of water. A few weeks later our Fire squad went off in a lorry to practise putting out real incendiary bombs.
The dark evenings were very tedious. We gathered in the large entrance hall where some of us would sing-a-long and some would dance to the music on a cabinet gramophone playing hit songs of the day, like Begin the Beguine, Deep Purple Night, some of Bing Crosby’s, and a long-time favourite of Louis Armstrong’s, ‘All of Me’. Some did their knitting, or wrote letters, and the office boys played cards or darts. Later a screen was produced and we saw cartoons and Laurel and Hardy films. At home for the weekends, I spent time gardening, darning stockings, mending and altering my clothes, with always knitting and letters to write. Mum and I would go to the pictures Saturday afternoons, usually getting home before the sirens went.
When we heard that my cousin George had been taken prisoner of war, we were relieved to know he was still alive after being missing for so long. After Dunkirk it had been relatively quiet, but later on in August 1940 bad raids started again every day, continuing into September, when the Germans were trying to put our airfields out of action.
On August 20th Churchill made his famous speech, repeating the words he had used on May 10th when he became Prime Minister – ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat’.
