World War 2 hadn’t been over for two years yet. The British were still under a regime of rationing of food, clothing and fuel. The allocated rations were lower than they had been during World War 2 as supplies were diverted from Britain to feed starving peoples on the continent of Europe. It wasn’t just food and clothing that were in short supply, but the whole of the energy sector damaged by war, short of manpower because much had been diverted into the armed forces was also thus unable to satisfy demand.
Power cuts meant that often there were limited supplies of electricity, sometimes only two hours a day. Gas heating likewise was inadequate because gas pressure was throttled back on sometimes not available as gas was predominantly coal gas. Coal supplies were also restricted with deliveries being erratic and affected by the limitations on the transportation system.
My father finished the war as a Warrant Officer air gunner, a rear gunner in a Lancaster crew. He married my mother, then a Women’s Royal Air Force teleprinter operator, in Bicester church surrounded by other members of his Lancaster crew. They were in temporary accommodation, as so many were after the war damage created a severe shortage of housing, and my crib when I was born that January was the bottom drawer of a chest of drawers.
Some photos exist because my father appears to have carried a box brownie everywhere with him since 1939 (I still have the camera). Nothing operational features apart from the old photograph of him in the western desert where he started off as a medical orderly on a crash tender as part of a squadron, possibly 31 squadron where I believe he finally became a rear gunner on Wellingtons bombers.
He appears to have been an ad hoc gunner in the base at Alexandria, doing the occasional fill in as a gunner on Sunderlands as well as Wellingtons – as he’d switched from nursing to volunteer as a gunner and not come through the formal training route which entailed joining a Lancaster crew where training as a crew was rigorous – he was probably seen as a bit of an ‘odd bod’ not allocated to a particular crew.
My father was offered the opportunity of continuing in aircrew apparently being offered the chance to become a defensive systems person on the new V bombers. He declined, having already burned his flight logbook because he was not proud of having bombed German cities like Dresden. Like so many other aircrew members, he destroyed his personal records of that period. To stay on in the Air Force he reverted to his corporal nurse rating from 1939. The Air Force sent him to Guy’s hospital to be trained as a physiotherapist.
Reading David Kynaston’s Austerity Britain series, he paints an extraordinary picture of the beginning of 1947. It was a winter of record cold which began he reckons on 23rd January, when I was just 2 weeks old. How in a rented room my mother coped with fierce cold in a house next to Aylesbury prison in addition to all the constraints of rationing, I cannot understand. That winter was to remain a record breaker the main fuel at the time being coal and the pits under the New Labour government being nationalised causing some disruption. Of course, nationalisation did not change the management, and output was far lower than pre-war. To compound this much of the supply was in pithead mountains of coal which were frozen hard and the disruption the cold caused to the transport system made distribution even harder.
Evidence shows that in 1947 the general population was healthier than it has been since because rationing had kept a level of diet that was healthy, no processed foods and rations calculated to support health. But reading the stories of queues of people waiting for a new supply of rabbits to reach the butchers; reading the stories of the wonder of seeing an orange or a banana; reading the stories of bread shortages where bread had not been rationed during the actual war itself. Due to the diversion of supplies, especially to Germany, bread was in short supply. It is amazing there was no civil unrest, but this was a stoic people who survived the Blitz, V1 and V2 missiles. A blast from a V2 apparently caused mum some embarrassment as she was close enough for the blast to mess with her clothing, any closer I would not be here.
On top of the hardship of a World War, was added the trials of surviving in an era dominated by shortages and the black market. As a babe of course I was blissfully unaware of this except probably being cold sometimes.
It’s no surprise then that after completion of his training my father should accept a mid-1948 posting to the warmth of the Red Sea and the RAF base in Aden. In a photograph I found of my mother on the troop ship she looks slim and beautiful but already evident is the bump that was to become my sister. Family tales provide some colour such as the stories of my being seasick on the top bunk on the troop ship whilst my mother occupied the bunk below. But my first memories are not of the cold nor austerity or the lack of housing but rather of the beach, the sand and the sea of Aden.
In 1950 we returned, posted to Headley Court as a physio, returning to a still rationed Britain, me having gained a sister too – but that is another tale, heralding my beginnings as an artist…
Recent Comments