If you were lucky enough to have money to go on the bus...

Alvin Mansfield: (Telling us what an ‘accumulator’ is)

When we had battery powered radios as we did, you’d have a high tension battery of 120 volts, but then for the filament of the valve, you had to have an ‘accumulator’, and it was only two volts, but you could get a strong current from it. It was re-chargeable; when it ran down, you’d have to take it to the local radio shop to be re-charged. After the war when I was fourteen that was one of my jobs — in a radio shop recharging the accumulators.

Vera Taylor:

This is where I come in as I was more or less the same age as Alvin: I was ten onwards when the war finished. We had no electric or gas in our cottage during the war — we just had to use what we had.

When we were finally lucky enough to get a radio, we had the problem of taking the accumulator to Bridgnorth (which was two miles). You could either walk with it — which sometimes we had to if we had no money for the bus; or otherwise — if we were lucky enough to have money to go on the bus then we had to hide this accumulator as the driver would say “You’re not allowed on the bus” because it was acid, and it could spill you see. So very cautiously and feeling very guilty, we’d do it. I was doing things for my Mother, things that had to be done, but at the same time I felt bad, so tried to hide the accumulator. I was afraid of it- it was so precious and you had to keep it upright so as not to spill it.

In order for it to work you put it at the back of the radio, and it worked much like a car battery — that has to be charged too. It was about 7 inches long, and quite heavy. I always seemed to come in to these jobs. My brothers were away doing National Service, so any little jobs like this I had to do. I also had to collect wood for the fire. We had a coal fire, but we couldn’t always afford to buy the coal so I had to go out and collect as much wood as I could.

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

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