"No Mother, not the dog!"

My name’s Robert Burns and I was born in 1934 in Walsall in the West Midlands. I was five years old when the war broke out and I remember it very well.

The first thing I remember was my brothers going off to war. My Mother who anticipated food rationing, we had already got chickens, ducks and rabbits, then we decided to get a pig a rear it with a bottle. At six months you could kill the pig then. We eat all our pets; at one stage my Mother said “we’ve got no meat, we’ll have to eat the dog!” and I cried “No Mother not the dog!”

This story was collected by Jessie Atkinson and was submitted to the People’s War site by Becky Barugh of the BBC Radio Shropshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Robert Burns and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

See more of Robert's stories:

• We buried the bakers van
• It was full of bombs
• Everyone donated a tin of corned beef

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