Memories of my Alphington childhood 1935–1949 – Chapter 12
VE Party on the Green, Devonia Terrace
Miller family
Typical Prefab
St. Fagans Museum
Typical Nissen hut
anon
Meccano
Meccano Liverpool
Boys playing conkers
BBC
Conkers as the H&S would have it in 2008
Anon
Girls still enjoy skipping 2008
BBC
The end of the war
By Philip Miller
The war over our lives were to change again. Too young to remember life in peacetime, the war years seemed to a child of my age to be the norm. I knew no different. I am not sure what I expected.
Celebrations
It wasn't long before the grown ups were in party mood and we youngsters joined into the spirit of things.
Probably the most significant event ever to occur on our green (now the entrance of Legion Way) was the VE (Victory in Europe) Celebrations. All the families of Cross View and Devonia Terrace came together for a party to mark the end of WWII. Trestle tables were set up, all the mums made best use of their ration books to give us a massive spread.
The day culminated in a bonfire on which we burnt an effigy of Adolf Hitler. The bonfire was first draped by a Swastika flag brought home from Germany by the son of one of our neighbours; I think the family name was Brewer.
The bonfire was so hot it cracked the window of the policeman's office but nobody cared ... the war was over.
Demob
It would be some time yet before my father was demobilised from the Army.
I barely remember him in civilian clothes so it was a bit of a surprise when he walked up the garden path wearing his demob issue grey pin striped suit and a trilby hat. He never wore that hat again.
All servicemen and I presume women were issued with a set of civilian clothes on discharge. I think the men's suits came with a choice of two. So to see them all in their civvies, it was almost as if they were back in uniform again! This time the 'Grey Pin Striped Brigade'.
But still the rationing goes on
Although we were at peace, rationing continued, we still needed coupons to buy sweets right up until the 50's, I think 1953. Meat didn't come off rationing until 1954. Bread wasn't rationed during the war but it was put on in 1947. So many changes we thought would happen overnight didn't happen for a wile.
I recall a friend's birthday party post war when his mother was able to obtain just one banana. It was cut in thin slices so that we could all have a taste. It was the first banana we had seen.
By the time victory in Japan was declared a few fireworks were available in the shops to celerbrate VJ Day. I and the other children were allowed a 1/- bag (5p). Surprising what we got for 5p, Penny bangers, a Catharine wheel that wouldn't go round etc.
Holidays
In 1946 with my father back home a promise my mother made continually throughout the war was fulfilled, "When the war is over we would have a holiday" We did, we rented a caravan at Blue Anchor in North Somerset.
In those days long before the axe of Beeching fell it was possible to travel all the way by train. We were able to travel from Alphington Halt to Exeter St. David's, Taunton and then onto Blue Anchor.
Another first on this holiday was to have a 'Lyons Choc Ice' a local Blue Anchor Café/shop took delivery of their first delivery since the end of the war and we were allowed one per child until they ran out.
Light and bells once more
Great excitement when we learnt that the gas lamp post to the right of what is now the entrance to Legion Way was to be lit again after being in darkness throughout the war. We gathered in next doors front room and waited for the magical event and cheered when it came alight. At last the blackout was lifted.
Church bells that had been silenced throughout the war were allowed to be rung again.
The Morrison shelter was taken out of the front room, the blackout curtains taken down and the sticky blast tape was peeled off the windows. Our house started to look like a proper home. The tops of the redundant Morrison Shelters were used as the saftey fence around the speedway track at the County Ground. I attended a meeting of the Falcons with my father when during a race the gate to the pits, also made from a Morrison top, swung open accidently. There was a nasty accident when a rider collided with it.
Toys
Toy shops during the war must have had a very lean time as toys made from metal such as Dinky toys, train sets etc. were just not produced as the metal was required for more important products such as weapons and equipment needed to fight the war. Factories that made such toys were required to manufacture munitions or parts for aircraft. Board games, toys made of wood, rag dolls and other less essential materials were available. I remember toy post offices and shops with fake stamps and money all in cardboard and paper. Plastic toys in the form that we know today were not yet in production it was still a comparatively new material.
A lot of toys were made for us by dads or uncles from scraps of wood and whatever paint they could find, yes even paint was scarce! They made dolls houses, farmyards, forts were popular with the boys as were garages.
Dressing up outfits were another favourite. Cowboy and Indian outfits for the boys, nurse's outfits for the girls.
Many of the toys and books that were given to me at Christmas time were often second-hand but that mattered not, they were new to me.
We also made our own toys. A scrap of wood, a few tin tacks soon made a respectable battleship. A set of old pram wheels, a box, a plank of wood and a length of rope could be turned into a wonderful cart. It certainly taught us to be creative and skilled in the use of hand tools.
Playtime Games
Games in the Playground went in cycles or crazes as we called them depending on the seasons. There was conkers, marbles, paper aeroplanes, flicking cigarette cards, five stones and others I have forgotten. The strange thing is that nobody said " tomorrow is the start of the marble craze" they just evolved, one day we would be playing conkers and suddenly it would change to a completely different craze.......
Conkers
An awful lot of cheating took place in the conker season, or should I call it gamesmanship.
All manner of methods were experimented with to provide a match winning conker. Some were baked in the oven or soaked in vinegar. The hardest ones I had were some that had been forgotten in a drawer all year, they were rock hard........Thinking back I guess that the annual conkers craze ended when our knuckles became too sore to stand anymore bruises!
The girls enjoyed games such as hopscotch. A skipping rope was almost standard equipment for schoolgirls; they all went to school carrying their skipping ropes. It was fun as well as jolly good exercise.
Some of us still played with hoops and spinning tops although by that era they were fast becoming toys of the past.
Post War Toys
With the end of the war new toys in the shops soon appeared although very limited. We heard via the grapevine that Webbers in Exeter opposite the Guildhall had a consignment of Dinky Toys. I pleaded with my mother to have one. Bless her she caught the bus into Exeter only to find a queue half way down Fore Street Hill made up of mothers on the same mission. By the time she got to the counter all the Dinky cars had been sold so she brought me home an aeroplane.
Much later my parents bought me a No.6 Meccano set. What a wonderful present this was. I made all manner of things from roundabouts, to cranes, lift bridges and Lorries. I had been given a small steam engine that I used to power roundabouts etc. Meccano was a superb educational toy that kept me amused for hours.
Trivia today but very real to us young people in the post war years.
Today it would be difficult to imagine catching the bus into Exeter to stand in a long queue down the street just to buy a ball point pen......yes we did that. They were a new invention and every kid wanted one. A ban was imposed on their use in school as it was said they would ruin our handwriting! They also leaked and could make an awful mess.
We were not the only people caught up in this excitement. It was reported across the Atlantic on an October morning in 1945 a crowd of over 5,000 people jammed the entrance of New York's Gimbels Department Store just to buy a ball point pen.
We also queued in Woolworths to buy strips of electrical wire covered in various coloured plastic.....why? We stripped the plastic off the wire and by threading the tubes of plastic onto pins we made cross sword badges. The girls wove the coloured plastic into brooches. This was a craze that swept the country post war. Remember we had few if any toys, we made our own.
Somebody in Sunderland recording their memories wrote: 'Suddenly on the scene appeared brightly coloured plastic wire and all the women made necklaces, bracelets etc for costume jewellery'.
Time after time Woolworths ran out of stock, they must have wondered what had hit them! Every telephone engineer that opened a manhole cover soon had an audience of kids asking for off cuts of their coloured wire. It all sounds crazy today, but that is how it was................was it the new bright colours that attracted us after years of grey during the war, I think it may have been. There was no Blue Peter TV to encourage children to make things, it was all spontaneous.
So many new things were appearing in the post war years that it is difficult to recall them all. One that comes to mind was seeing florescent strip lights illuminating the window of a furniture store in Fore Street Hill. Something my generation had never seen in the dark days of blackout. As I said earlier, trivia but it was true.
Prefab homes
Many Servicemen returning to civilian life had no home to return to. Their homes had been flattened by enemy bombing. With their husbands away the wives and children had moved in with friends and relative but now overcrowding became a problem, they required homes of their own and there just wasn't enough to go around.
The government of the day brought in prefabricated bungalows. Prefabs as they were known were the result of the 1944 Temporary Housing Programme, and were designed to provide a quick solution to the massive lack of housing caused by the war.
But prefabs were not being erected quickly enough at the start to satisfy the demand. So in desperation 'squatting' developed for many homeless families.
Quite simply where a property became vacant the squatters would move in. Often breaking in to gain access. With nowhere else to live the authorities were powerless to move them on.
Squatters in the nissen huts
In Alphington we experienced the desperate plight of such families. The army vacated the Nissen huts in Matford lane and as the army moved out so the squatters moved in.
We boys had cycled up the lane to see what was happening. We were confronted with people with all manner of transport loaded with their belongings moving into the huts. It was all a bit of a frenzy and panic to get in and establish their pitch as it were.
There were more families than huts available. We noticed one hut that nobody was interested in. It had a Nissen top, no lining and it was built up on dwarf brick walls about 500cm high. The brickwork was in lattice formation as if intended to ventilate what ever had been stored in there. It was probably housing for a generator.
In that condition even we children could see that it was it was totally unsuitable to live in. However as we watched events the heavens opened and it poured with rain so we lads took shelter in this hut. It wasn't long before we were approached by two men who asked if we were living here!
When we told them no, they became most excited and discussed filling in the gaps in the brickwork. They asked us if we would stay in the hut whilst they went back into Exeter to fetch their belongings. We were not keen but they gave us 7/6d (37½p) to wait until they got back. So desperate were they that they moved two families into that hut.
Conditions were poor for the service personnel who had been stationed in the camp. It must have been terrible for children. The families would have had to share the communal toilets and wash huts.
I learn that in some parts of the Country the local authorities stepped in to make these huts more habitable albeit temporary. I have no knowledge of what happened in Alphington, perhaps somebody will tell me.
Philip Miller's memories continue in chapter 13.