Me and Mister Hitler: Childhood Memories in North Yorkshire

I would be seven years old when the war began to affect the small Yorkshire village where I lived.
My carefree childhood seemed to disappear overnight and a different one took its place — like starting a different chapter in a book.
Food and clothing became rationed, and horror of horrors!!!! Sweets disappeared!!!! Everything we had taken for granted became so scarce that if my mother saw a queue forming outside a shop she would automatically join it, saying to me “Run home and fetch my purse!” As you can imagine, tea-time was often a surprise!
A fresh egg was a real treat, as no food could be spared to feed the hens, and they, poor things, found their way one by one into the cooking pot. Any baking had to be done with egg substitute, a horrible powder which smelled disgusting and turned cakes a most un-appetising dark yellow. A request for anything that wasn’t on the pantry shelf would always bring the same response —“ Don’t yer know there’s a war on?”
Every inconvenience or misfortune that befell me during this period in my life I blamed on one person…. And that person was MR HITLER !
Because of him nearly all the men in our village had gone to war. My sister and I would remember them every night in our prayers, asking for their safe return. One of them, we found out later, hadn’t gone to war at all, but was working in a restaurant in Leeds, so he was probably safer than us. I bet he got more to eat as well!
I don’t remember when the turning point came, but “Don’t yer know there’s a war on” became replaced with “When the war is over”…… and suddenly it was! The celebrations this brought about went on for days! Everyone pushed their pianos into the street, and trestle tables groaned under the weight of potted beef sandwiches, the inevitable deep yellow sponge cake and buckets of beer.
A giant bonfire was lit on the village green, and it was this that symbolised the end of the war for me, because there, blazing away on top of it, was a life-sized effigy of MR HITLER!

Anne Rodwell

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.