Extra Stars for the Americans

DISCLAIMER:
This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Phil Sealey of the Somerset County Museum Team on behalf of Judy O’Malley and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions

“I am Judy O’Malley and I was a child of seven at the beginning of the war. We lived at Lymington, Hampshire and my parents ran a pub. I remember very well the day that war broke out, all the family were in the saloon bar and we were listening to the radio, immediately afterwards my parents sent us all off to Mass to pray that the war would be over soon. It was all very frightening to a little girl of seven, because we thought the bombs were going to drop on us immediately.
I remember very well before the war, it must have been 1936/7, people talking about it, whether there was going to be a war or not, I remember sitting very frightened wondering what would happen. I wasn’t very sure what war was, but it sounded as if we’d all die there and then, not sometime in the future, children are very literal, aren’t they?
The next year we moved to Winchester and immediately I was sent off to a convent, which although the base of the convent was in Upper Norwood in London, had been evacuated to Oxfordshire, just outside Bicester. To get there we had to go by train to Reading, change at Reading, Reading to Oxford, change at Oxford, off the train there and then get a bus from Oxford to Bicester. At Bicester the milk van from the village of Fringford, where we were actually evacuated to, came to pick us up. That is how we got there all during the war, backwards and forwards. The van used to deliver everything; beside milk it delivered bread, the post and carried people. In fact in Fringford village itself they still had girls with yokes who delivered milk.
My sisters were at the same Order of Nuns at Cromer, which closed down at the beginning of the war because it was a dangerous area to be in. So we were all evacuated, the convent itself was divided into two houses, one in Fringford and the other in Stoke Lyne. The younger ones, like me at seven, went to the one at Fringford, and my sisters, who were older than I was, went to Stoke Lyne. So I was left there, a child of seven, in this stately home.
The house belonged to Lord and Lady Eyles, they had two daughters and a son Algernon. He went off to war, and the two daughters and Lord and Lady Eyles lived in the Lodge. They were very much a presence, very loud, very posh — “hello, Delia” — that sort of thing, quite amusing!
There were only certain parts of the house that we were allowed to go in. We had to use the backstairs, but we did occasionally go round to the front stairs, which were absolutely beautiful, and I remember we went ‘hunting’ one day and found a cupboard full of old costume, crinolines dating back through the ages. I mean I would absolutely give my eyeteeth to see them now, of course we thought they were wonderful and we used to dress up in them, absolutely forbidden mind you. It was all part of what I remember of my childhood there. Because there was an airfield fairly nearby it was thought to be quite dangerous, so we spent a lot of the time down in the ‘dungeons’, where it was supposed to be safe, underneath the house. After a night there we didn’t have school the next day, which was wonderful.
We did have a uniform, and there was this poor man, who didn’t have any legs, who used to come to the stables to cobble the shoes for the whole convent each week. We used to feel so sorry for him because, although we presumed they fed him, it didn’t seem as though they did.
We only did part-time schooling in the morning, the afternoons were taken up with picking blackberries, hip picking, potato picking, and knitting for the soldiers. Imagine my effort at that age, trying to knit socks, turning heels was ridiculous; I don’t think I ever got it done.
Everything was used and with the hips the nuns used to make rosehip syrup, which I absolutely detested, it was horrible. Generally the food at the convent was dreadful anyway. For breakfast we used to have two slices of bread and marg[arine], lunch was almost uneatable.
The nuns used to cook the potatoes by piling them into boiling water, eyes, skins and all, and at the end of our lunch there was a nun who used to stand at the door and we had to proffer our plates to be examined. If there was anything left over, skin of potatoes, or fat — they just used to use meat with fat on — we were sent back with it. We used to go back and stick it up our knicker legs, and then when we went outside there was a big pit in the yard and we used to shove it down there. It must have smelt awful with our potato peelings and congealed fat.
In the evening there was bread and marg. On Sunday we used to have a scraping of jam, and we had boiled cocoa in the morning and tea in the evening, and that was it. We were all very healthy. I can’t imagine we suffered very badly from anything
I do remember once a week what we called shop. We used to go in [in] alphabetical order and my name at the time was Copps, so I remember very vividly, it used to be “As to Cs for shop”. We used to go in and we were allowed to buy a quarter pound of sweets for the week. That was our weekly ration and our pocket money spent, that was the highlight of our week. On a Friday night we were all lined up and given a mug full of senna pods! So although we got the sweets, we also got the senna pods as well, unfortunately.
I remember the Americans arriving, they must have taken over the Air Force station which was nearby, they ‘adopted’ our convent so we did very well for goodies and things like that. They used to come and see the children who didn’t go home for holidays at all, but I always went home so I missed out on the wonderful gifts. Oranges and O[h] Henry bars [American candy], and what I remember most, something they called orange marmalade, I’ve never had the taste since, it was absolutely wonderful.
We had to have fire drill. You went to an upper window where there was a chute, they put us on the chute and you had to shoot down it, everyone was terrified, it was from a first floor window. I was pushed out first to go down, it was quite fun when we did it; I quite enjoyed that.
When the Americans arrived in Winchester, my parents still had a pub there; I had three older sisters who were teenagers so they had a whale of a time. Being the youngest was rather a nuisance, so they used to give me sixpence to go off to the pictures so I didn’t cling on to them and go with them wherever they went. They had so many choices of boyfriends that I would be sent off to one place, and say, ‘my sister can’t manage it today’, but she, in fact, had another date somewhere else. I think I must have been a horrible child really; I think I must have blackmailed them.
At different times all my sisters got engaged to Americans. I might say that none of them married them in the end; they all went off at D-day. One of my sister’s boyfriends broke ranks and came to say goodbye to her, he would have been shot if he had been found out. About ten days to a fortnight later they started drifting back to the stations where they were outside Winchester. My mother had gone to the pictures to see For Whom the Bell Tolls, and in those days they used to put messages on the screen if somebody was wanted. Some particular friends of my mother came back — they were on their way back to America — and I remember having to go down to the Odeon, and asking them to put a message on the screen to bring my mother out. She had to come home to see them.
They were very close friends of my mother’s, they stayed overnight, and then dashed off again. As far as we know all the particular friends came home unscathed. I don’t remember anyone who hadn’t survived
The Americans were big spenders of course and we were absolutely packed out every night with them, and we didn’t have enough glasses, so they used to bring their own jam jars to fill with beer, or whatever. The big-timers used to say, “Gee!” “Can we have some champagne?” My father would go down into the cellar and stick a couple of extra stars on the champagne and bring it up again, they didn’t know. I have to say they were always good friends so it was quite fun when the Americans were there, my sisters really enjoyed it.
I do remember the war ending and people having a wonderful time celebrating. We had to sit down and say prayers, we had two days off from school I think from actual lessons, but you wouldn’t have known anything had happened. That was it; it was all very quiet and subdued.
Eventually, after the war we went back to the convent in Upper Norwood. The chapel, in fact, had been bombed. It was on a Sunday and the nuns had just finished Mass and left, the chapel was empty at the time, so it was noted as a miracle that nobody had been hurt, it was later rebuilt. The whole convent had moved back by then. Most of the time I was stuck in the convent, but we survived, we didn’t think it was too hard. We used to get the brush on our bottoms and the cane, things like that, but we just accepted it. It would be child abuse now.
I remember especially Fringford, because of course it was the village of Flora Thompson’s Lark Rise to Candleford - her memories of it. When I read the book it brought back memories to me as well. We have visited it since but now every street is ‘Flora Thompson’ this, and ‘Lark Rise’ that. Fringford Manor itself, where we were, is now flats. I do remember at the Manor, right across the front, there was this wonderful, wonderful wisteria, and even now I can’t see wisteria without thinking of that. The smell was absolutely fantastic, wonderful; it was great. My sisters were in the other house [at Stoke Lyne], which was also in a stately home, and they used to have to walk four or five miles to come and see me sometimes, their little sister who was abandoned in the other house.”

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