Childhood War Memories from Woodville, Derbyshire

This is Betty Baldwin's story - she lived in Woodville, Derbyshire.

I was born in 1943, so I was five when the war started. I don’t think it mattered that much to me then, but later when we were equipped with gas masks it suddenly registered that we could be in great danger, we had to take them everywhere.

The air raid siren was located on the police station opposite to where we lived; it was a terrifying sound. Before we had the siren, the various pottery works around us used their hooters to alert us of a raid.

We all had to have “blackout” curtains or blinds fitted and sticky tape on our windows. They were Wardens patrolling the streets and if a chink of light showed they would bang on the door and shout, “Put that lights out”, sometimes not so polite as that.

One day I came from school to find men taking the iron railings from the front of our houses, they were taking it to help the war effort, our iron railings were used to make ammunition.

Then we had food rationing, the amounts of meat, tea, sugar, butter and cheese were very meagre, there were coupons and dockets for just about everything, a time to make do and mend and hand-me–down clothing.

We were allowed one pound of sweets per month (if there were any to buy), bananas and oranges we never saw.

My father had his own business and was too old to be in the forces, but he was a skilled mechanic, so therefore he was conscripted to work in a munitions factory where he worked shifts. My mother and sister kept the business open during this time mending punctures and selling what petrol we could get, (petrol was also rationed, I believe, selling around 1/9d – 1/11d a gallon). Father did car repairs between his shifts and Sundays (Sunday his day off).

We didn’t get many bombs dropped round us, I remember three. We could always tell the German ‘planes from ours as the German ‘planes made a chugging noise. When Coventry was obliterated you could see the glow in the sky from my bedroom window; that has a terrible night’s work.

Identity cards were another thing we had to have (I’ve still got mine). Going to church Sunday mornings we sometimes had to identify ourselves to the wardens (talk about Dad’s Army!).

National Savings was encouraged; as children we bought saving stamps at school to help raise funds.

We had our lighter moments though. One day two German P. O. W.s escaped from somewhere, I can’t remember where, but they came to our village. My sister saw them when she was serving petrol to a customer, she notified the police station and they were picked up along the road and put in a police cell for the night. They were young lads, no doubt more frightened than we were.

There always seem to be something going on, Church socials, dancing, concerts, all sorts of fundraising events but, looking back, though everywhere was pitch black, we felt safer walking in the streets than what we do today.

We often had convoys of Americans through our village, as kids do we waved and shouted, “Any gum, chum”, and often they would throw us a Mars Bar or a packet of chewing gum which delighted us, seeing as it was very scarce to us.

When the war ended, there were bonfires and fireworks, but the thing that sticks in my mind most was late one night someone came down our road walking slowly and beating a drum, probably one beat every second, it sounded so eerie. I’ve never forgotten it.

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