A Child's War (8 page)

Is Father as all-wise as he thinks he is? Does Mother know her P’s and Q-pons? Here’s the way to find out! Make a game of these questions round the fire this evening, and see whether the men or the womenfolk score the highest. The total score is 55; 50 is excellent; 40 not bad; anything less than 30 is – probably Father!

1
Which of these is the correct way to wash cooking fat so that it can be used again?

a) Pour boiling water over it; b) Rub through a fine sieve; c) Bring to the boil in water, pour into a bowl; when cool, lift off and scrape underneath; d) Hold it under running cold water.

Score 10

2
a) Is the following statement true or false? A child needs more meat than a man does.

b) What is the value of Points coupons A, B and C?

Score 5 for each question, full score 10

3
a) How many yolks and how many whites are in a ⅓ packet of dried eggs?

b) How many packets are you allowed this month?

Score 5 for each correct answer, full score 10

4
What is (or are) Rose Hips?

a) Name of a famous woman spy; b) An eastern dance; c) Pods of the wild rose, rich in Vitamin C; d) Name of a Russian folk song.

Score 10

5
How much priority milk are children under six allowed?

Score 5

6
Two of the following are provided by the Government for children under six years old. Which two?

a) Cocoa; b) Cod liver oil; c) Cornflour; d) Tomato juice; e) Orange juice

One correct answer 5, full score 10

P
ENALTIES
: Ask Mother if she’s filled in Section A at the top of page 35 of her ration book. If not she must deduct 5 from her total! Did Father offer anybody some of his sweet ration this Christmas? If not, he loses 5 from his score!

A
NSWERS
:
1
c).
2
a) True. A child needs actually more meat for its body weight than a man does. This is because meat is the kind of food (called protein) which is needed by the body for making new tissue and bones. b) A, 1; B, 2; C, 2.
3
a) 12 yolks and 12 whites – i.e. 12 whole eggs; 2 for adults, 4 for green ration book holders.
4
Pods of the wild rose.
5
7 pints a week for green ration book holders.
6
b) and e).

Children’s clothes were far more formal in the 1930s and 1940s than they are today; their versions of trainers, track-suits and sports wear were strictly limited to the games field. For younger boys, perhaps 4 to 14 years old, normal dress consisted of short trousers, long socks, worn with sandals or boots, a shirt and tie (usually a school tie, often knitted), worn with a v-necked jumper and a jacket or school blazer. The whole outfit was finished off with a cap, usually from school or the Cubs. The illustrations to Richmal Crompton’s
Just William
depict this perfectly.

For younger girls of school age, cotton frocks (dresses) in summer and gym-slips and blouses in winter were standard, worn with long socks or lisle stockings, sandals or shoes, topped with cardigans or jumpers, and either a school beret or a hat (straw in summer, felt in winter).

In winter, boys and girls would add overcoats or raincoats, with knitted woollen scarves, knitted gloves and, perhaps, wellington boots.

The passage from childhood to adulthood was very different at this time; at about 14 or 15 children suddenly became adults. The concept of the teenager appeared only in the 1950s as a reflection of the increased spending power of the age group brought about by post-war prosperity.

Fashions reflected this: teenage boys wore smaller versions of men’s suits, which were sold with the option of long or short trousers; similarly teenage girls began to wear smaller versions of their mothers’s day dresses, and stockings instead of socks.

Some items of clothing were introduced, or made fashionable, by the war. Trousers, totally a male preserve before the war, were worn by more and more women, along with the ‘siren suit’ – what we might today call a boiler suit or overalls – and a head scarf. These were worn by factory workers and so wearers had the air of doing their patriotic duty; as such the clothes became fashionable, especially among the middle classes. Another item of wartime ‘clothing’ was the helmet: gentlemen’s hatters, such as Dunn’s, sold bakelite versions of the steel helmet, and every boy, including William, wanted their own. In
William and the Evacuees
(published in 1940), Richmal Crompton showed William in urgent need of 1
s
6
d
– but penniless:

William wanted a tin hat. All the other Outlaws, all the other boys he knew, had tin hats of one sort or another, but it so happened that William was without either a tin hat or the money to buy one. Very inferior ones could be bought for as little as sixpence in Hadley, but William did not want an inferior one, and in any case he did not possess sixpence. The one he wanted cost one and six, but he was as likely to possess the moon as one and six, he told himself, adding with bitter sarcasm, ‘a jolly sight likelier’.

Clothes rationing was announced on 1 June 1941 as coming into force immediately. unlike food rationing, it was not primarily brought in as a result of shortages of raw materials, but in order to release factories and factory workers for war work. There were no separate ration books available, but people were told to use the spare coupons in their food ration books for the first year. Separate clothing ration books were first issued on 1 June 1942, these having red covers.

Rationing was extremely tight. The following suggested plans from a book printed at the time show how little you could get (children’s outfits would be similar, with just a few changes, for example, girls socks instead of stockings).

Evening-gowns are omitted from the plan since they are, in any case, not essential garments for most people. Special sportswear is also omitted on the same grounds. A macintosh is not included because umbrellas, which are unrationed, can be made to serve instead, used in conjunction with an old coat.

Clothes rationing was a particular nightmare for parents. The scheme took little account of children growing out of their clothes. One early book had a section on this entitled: ‘To eke out children’s rations’; part of it ran:

Either through the school or through your local Women’s Institute, you may be able to get in touch with other mothers and arrange to exchange your children’s garments. You give a good dress or a suit, too small for your own daughter or son, and get in exchange a pair of shoes or a coat which can be worn for a year or more.

The question of school uniforms is already being tackled by the schools themselves. Uniforms are likely to be considerably simplified and, for the rest, an exchange system is almost certain to be worked out before the difficulties become formidable.

All sorts of clothing were in short supply. John Merritt:

In 1943 my family moved to Wokingham in Berkshire. I joined the 5th Wokingham Scouts and we used to have our meetings in a hall near St Paul’s School. I do know that uniforms were in short supply, especially shirts and shorts and the ‘lemon-squeezer’ hats, which were much coveted. I did, however, get some green binding tape for my mum to make flashes for my socks, they of course fitted to the elastic garters that kept my socks up. Ninety-nine per cent of the boys wore short trousers. I didn’t have a pair of long trousers until I left school at 15.

As part of London’s evacuation scheme the London Clothing Scheme was set up. Some of the children being evacuated came from very poor families indeed, and had few suitable clothes or shoes. Clothing stores were set up by the Women’s Voluntary Service in reception areas, stocked partly by clothes supplied officially and partly by gifts. Children’s parents paid according to what they could afford.

Clothes could be passed on and patched only so often before they became unwearable. At the end of 1942 it was announced that older children would receive extra clothing coupons in the following year’s book; those born between September 1925 and December 1926 were to receive 10 extra coupons; between January and July 1927, 20 coupons; and from August 1927 up to the end of 1929, 30 extra. And if you think that was a bit complicated, there was more:

Children born after 1929 – who, when measured on or before 31st October 1943 are 5 feet 3 inches or more in height or who weigh 7 stone 12 pounds or more* (or need to wear boots or shoes of a size larger than 5½ in boys’s or 3 in girls’s) will receive 20 extra coupons (in addition to the 10 extra already supplied to them with their clothing book).

*Heights and weights must be measured without boots or shoes, jackets, waistcoats, and 2.5 pounds must be deducted to allow for weight of other clothing. One thing never in short supply was bureaucracy, or ‘bumf’ (bum fodder – toilet paper).

To make the most of their existing clothes, the government encouraged people to ‘make do and mend’ (this meant patching and mending existing clothes) and to ‘sew and save’ (altering old clothes to make new ones). To this end the Board of Trade introduced the character of ‘Mrs Sew and Sew’: she was used in a series of advertisements to show how to ‘turn two old dresses into a new one’, and so on. There were meetings run by the Women’s Institute or the WVS to give demonstrations and advice.

Not all the advice was particularly helpful. The Ministry of Information booklet ‘Make Do and Mend’, published in 1943, contains the following: ‘Cutting-Down for the Children – Plus-fours will make two pairs of shorts for a school-boy. An old skirt will make one pair of knickers and a little play-skirt for a seven year old.’, and, most baffling of all, ‘Woollen stockings with worn feet can have the legs opened down the back seams and can then be made up into an infant’s jersey. Bind it with ribbon at neck, sleeves and hem.’

If you were prepared to pay there was always the ‘Black Market’, which meant buying things illegally. But the goods were not always what they seemed. Vivien Hatton: ‘Once we went to a market near Ludgate Circus, there were some wide-boys selling nylons without coupons. They were very expensive, ten shillings, I think, but we thought we’d got a bargain. When we got home and opened the boxes we found they had seams at the front – we’d been sold rejects!’

Everyone was urged to do as much as they could towards the war effort – this was known as ‘doing your bit’. Children were encouraged to become involved in war service from an early age. With younger children this mainly took the form of salvage – collecting waste products for re-use; today we would call this recycling.

Scrap materials collected included wastepaper, metal, bones, tinfoil, rubber, rags, bottles and jam-jars, as well as waste food and acorns for pig swill. Other collections included magazines and books for the forces, clothes for refugees and air-raid victims, and herbs, seaweed, horse-chestnuts, rose hips and nettles for use in making medicines.

The government did its best to involve children in as many ways as possible. The following leaflet was issued in 1941 by the Ministry of Information. It sets out some of the many ways in which they could ‘do their bit’.