What was it like?

Dark is the Dawn

What was World war 2 really like for a child growing up

during  those unforgettable years? 'Morale had to be

kept high,' recalls Cynthia Morey. 'We were encouraged

to be intensely patriotic, and to regard Hitler with derision

rather than fear. We'd goose-step  around, giving a

grotesque Nazi salute, and singing, 'Hitler's barmy, so's

his army, whistle while you work!' to the tune from the

new film 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' that we'd all

been taken to.'

The shortage of sweets, soon to be rationed, hit children

hard,  as did the disappearance from the shops of

bananas and oranges, not to appear again until after the

war. Those subjected to nightly air raids lost a lot of

sleep as they gathered in packed shelters for hours at a

time.

'During those severe austerity winters there was little or no heating  at home or at school, and most of

us soon got chilblains on our fingers, making it difficult to hold a pen. But schools were never closed, not 

even when snow lay thick on the ground, and we all got there somehow.

No doubt about it - we were tough in those days . . . ‘

There was tragedy - humour, too - in those turbulent years. Tragedy in the growing casualty lists;

humour in the camaraderie of crowded air raid shelters, where jokes about Hitler and his gang masked

everyone's underlying fears. Good-natured grumbling greeted the introduction of the 'National Loaf'-

Practical measures

As austerity escalated, we

were urged to use up every

inch of paper in our exercise

books, with narrower margins

and as much  as we could

feasibly get on to each page.

Textbooks were passed 

down to succeeding pupils at

the end of every school year,

new ones ordered only when

absolutely necessary. At the

beginning of the war, gas

masks had to be carried

everywhere - turning up at

school without one meant

that you were sent home to

fetch it.