Life in London and in the WRNS.

This story was submitted to the People’s War web site by a volunteer on behalf of Josie Page and has been added to the site with her permission. She fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

We had just moved to Maida Vale, London, in 1938 on account of my father’s work at Abbey Road recording studios. I was barely 16 year of age and had not finished my schooling in Surrey. Chamberlain was attempting to make peace with Hitler and schools were evacuating from London to the country. Not knowing what to do about completing my education it was decided I should take a course at Pitman’s: shorthand, typing, bookkeeping and commerce plus German. It was all boring but by the time war actually broke out I had obtained work in the Almoner’s Office at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Great Portland Street with a staff of ten. This I enjoyed!

In the following years several of the girls were bombed out of their homes, sometimes twice. After a day or two of living with friends or neighbours they returned to work, no counselling and they did not appear to be traumatised. We went under the stairs at night when the bombing began and sometimes up the hill to St John’s Wood and the recording studios where we slept in the basements. After the morning “all clear” siren we returned home to breakfast in Madia Vale then off to work by tube to the Hospital. The odour in the tubes was fearful. Hundreds of people had slept down there with the electric current turned off until morning when they went home (if it was there).

Our evenings were spent, unless there was a raid, playing cards and cribbage and listening to the radio. Tommy Handley’s “Its that Man Again” being a favourite.

I cannot guarantee the complete accuracy of my memory to the diminishing of food rations but at the height of the war a civilian adult received:-
1/3 pint of milk a day
1 egg a week
3 oz cheese (mild cheddar) a week
2 oz butter a week
3 oz lard a week
2-3 oz margarine a week
2 oz bacon a week
1/4 lb tea a month
1 lb sugar or preserve a month
2s/8d meat (invariably taken in stewing steak)
“points” for tinned ham, Spam, sardines and pilchards
Bread was rationed towards the end of the war and was generous
Soap was a terribly mean ration!

Children received any oranges or bananas which the Merchant Navy brought in. Expectant mothers and people with debilitating illness such as TB had extra butter and milk. Instant coffee did not appear to be rationed but was greeted with scorn. Soya sausages were bags of mystery; offal was not on ration but disappeared into the hotels. 5/- was the limit for a meal. Beer, cider, sherry and spirits were the tipple but wine drinking had not become "the thing"”

We carried our gas masks but thank goodness there was never the need to wear them. In the streets were wooden structures that looked like bird feeding tables painted in something which turned colour if gas fell. In the blackout people collided with them and winded themselves.

The blackout was awful: no chink of light was allowed from dwellings, no torches to guide you in the street. A type of neighbourhood patrol walked the streets guarding against firebombs. Shrapnel from all kinds of enemy weaponry were to be dodged.

In 1942 I decided to join the WRNS. After six months training in wireless telegraphy (Morse Code) I landed up at HMS Flowerdown (it sounds like something from a Gilbert and Sullivan opera) which had previously been a civilian station. We had four watches, 6 pm — midnight, 1 pm — 6 pm, 8 am — 1 pm and midnight — 8 am. Then the day off to sleep and the next day commenced at 6 pm again (each day beginning a watch earlier). Flowerdown was a few miles outside Winchester on the Andover road. Food was more plentiful than in civie street. We were issued with two suits, the one kept for best was referred to as the “tiddley suit” and we had a pair of bell-bottom trousers also. Black stockings when nylons came in were “one up” on the other services! We cycled around Hampshire but invariably got lost as all the signposts were removed! When American Servicemen in lorries took us to dances we were inevitably late getting there and in the small hours, getting back. The drivers went round in circles in the dark and we were perished. We were not keen on the Yanks, much preferring our own Matelotes but candidly admitting we went for the food.

We worked alongside the sailors and our work was to intercept the German Naval Enigma. We were referred to as a “Y” station and there were other “Y” stations including Wick and Scarborough. The German Naval Code, which we intercepted, was sent on to Bletchley Park although we knew none of this at the time. When we took on this work we were sworn to secrecy and believe it or not even those “in their cups” never leaked it. Only comparatively recently has the tale been told. How awful of Churchill that he ordered so much at Bletchley to be burned and destroyed at the end.

Through the taking of exams I had become a Petty Officer after 18 months and by the Autumn of 1945 was demobbed. On VE Day we danced in the High Street of Winchester with the statue of King Alfred looking down and VJ Day was spent in London. Food came off rationing finally by 1953 but clothes and materials for clothes and furnishings went on for a very long time on points.

Life that had been spent for many years surrounded by hoards of people and close friends was flattened overnight with VJ celebrations and a return to civie street. To quote a song of the time: “those were the days my friend, we thought they’d never end” ………..

Josie Page née Barrell - b.1922

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