Brighton behind the Front - Photographs and memories of the Second World War

Introduction

‘Even now at the sound of the siren, that used to herald the approach of enemy aircraft, I get the strange feeling of sickness in the pit of my stomach’. Ken Francis

People who lived through the Second World War often have vivid memories of a period in which their own lives, and British society, was profoundly changed. ‘Brighton Behind the Front’ gathers together memories, contemporary photographs, letters, a log book and diaries which depict what it was like to live in this south coast town during the war.

The two main sources for the book have very different origins and represent Brighton wartime life in different ways. The photographs were produced by the Borough of Brighton, and were primarily intended to serve as a record of wartime changes in the town (just as the photographs which we published in ‘Backyard Brighton’ and ‘Backstreet Brighton’, to which this book is a sequel, were created by the Borough to record the houses intended for demolition in so-called ‘slum clearance areas’). As far as we know, the photographs were not used for propaganda or morale-boosting during the war. They do, however, highlight the particular wartime role and concerns of the Borough, focusing for example on the organisation of air raid precautions, saving and recycling campaigns and evacuation. The photographs usually portray aspects of public life which reflect civic pride, and sometimes the subjects are posed to present themselves and the war in a positive light. Yet they are still evocative, because they depict familiar Brighton landmarks in starkly altered circumstances, and because they reveal hints of what it was like to live through those changes and to cope with terrible uncertainties.

By contrast, the memories, wartime diaries, letters and a log-book which are reproduced in ‘Brighton Behind the Front’ highlight the varied, personal detail of lived experience. The memories were mainly drawn from interviews and written responses which followed publicity in a local newspaper. As in photographs, memories have their own selectivity and bias; difficult times are sometimes remembered in a more positive light, and are influenced by postwar change and nostalgia, and by other accounts of the war.

Yet personal experiences are often recalled in graphic and careful detail, and people’s memories frequently cut across the simplistic public myths of the war. As Brian Dungate says, referring to the embarrassment of using a bucket as a toilet in front of other air raid shelter occupants, ‘These are the sorts of things you don’t read in books.’ Here there is co-operation, ingenuity and bravery, and the ever present ‘cuppertea’ and a sing-song. But interwoven with these positive memories there is fear, grief, exhaustion and boredom. While the photographs of evacuation show smiling faces, evacuees recall parents’ tears and their own false expectations.

 

Stories about wartime life also show that there was no single, typical Brighton. Some people remember hunger, others recall that ‘nobody was better off’, and that they were never hungry. Evacuees tell stories of both misery and delight. Some people remember the war as a last respite of neighbourliness before a postwar decline; others argue that it was the beginning of change for a new and better world. For Brighton people, and for British society in general, the nature and effects of the war were complex and even contradictory. In our selection of photographs and memories for this book we have tried to represent this variety of Brighton wartime experience.

For young Brightonians and visitors to the town there is much in ‘Brighton Behind the Front’ which will be strange and shocking. For an older generation who lived through the war the book will revive forgotten stories as well as well-rehearsed wartime anecdotes. It will provoke both negative and positive memories, and some sections may be upsetting. The book is also likely to be contentious, as readers remember different versions of the same events, or spot inaccuracies in the interviews or in our captions. We don’t pretend that this is a comprehensive history of wartime Brighton. ‘Brighton Behind the Front’ is a starting point for new remembering and debate about the war and its effects upon people’s lives. We hope that readers will become writers, and will send us their responses and corrections, as well as their own memories of the war.
Alistair Thomson

It was almost impossible for anyone living in Britain during the Second World War to avoid the war. It was a Total War for the British people, not as total as the war was for Jewish families living in Warsaw and Paris, or for the unlucky refugees caught in the fire-storm of Dresden, but the Second World War has rightly been called ‘The People’s War’.

Wars fought by the British in the nineteenth century in distant parts of the world tended to be spectator sports for the civilian population. More British soldiers were killed in the First World War that in the second, but this situation is reversed when it comes to civilian casualties. The German conquest of mainland Europe and the advent of bomber aircraft meant that civilians found themselves in the front-line and were no longer merely spectators.

The Second World War presented people with a variety of experiences very different from the tradition of men going off to war, with the women and children waiting at home. In 1940, during the Blitz on London, men conscripted into the army from the East End found themselves safe in military camps, while their families were being bombed. During this same period opinion polls showed that the public considered that the Air Raid Precautions, fire and ambulance services were all playing a more important and dangerous role than the army in the war effort. This is not to deny the traditional horrors of war endured by the bomber crews, infantrymen, merchant sailors and many others who fought the enemy directly.
Michael Corum

 

Air Raids

Brighton was not bombed as badly as London, Portsmouth, Coventry and many other towns; but throughout the war it suffered from ‘tip and run’ raids. The town was very close to German air bases in northern France, so very vulnerable to surprise attack from the air. Small groups of German fighter-bombers would come in from the sea, with little warning, bomb and machine gun the town for a few minutes and then disappear out to sea again. Some of the worst casualties occurred in these attacks, when people were caught unprepared and outside their shelters. The heaviest death toll in an air raid was on Saturday 14 September 1940, when a bomb from a single German raider landed on the Odeon Cinema, Kemptown. Fifty five people were killed in the cinema and surrounding houses. In the heaviest raid on Brighton, at midday on 25 May 1943, twenty five German fighter-bombers ‘swept in at wave top level and made a circuit of the town, dropping bombs over a wide area and gunning people in the street, including children coming home from school. Twenty four people were killed, two young boys and two policemen among them.’

There were fifty six air raids on Brighton although the sirens sounded ‘the alert’ 1,058 times. One hundred and ninety eight Brightonians lost their lives in air raids. The last raid was on 22 March 1944.
Michael Corum

Account of an Air Raid on Brighton Saturday Afternoon 14 September 1940 [at] approximately 3pm.

I don’t remember when the air raid warning went but heard what sounded like cannon (machine cannon which had been heard before during dog fights over the town).

As I stood at the door opening to the yard ‘cannon fire’ very loud; heard some things falling, and thinking these might be empty shells went in – as I did so I heard a bang definitely very loud and close, quickly land on face in scullery floor and put head under sink – another bang preceded by a whistle about one second long – all within ten seconds. Heard more stuff coming down – glass and rubble – heard mother shout ‘yes OK’ and shouted myself ‘OK mother’. Mother came out and we met in the kitchen. Shouts from father upstairs, mother said to me ‘go up and see if guests are alright’ (bedridden invalid and her husband were the blind customers of the family boarding house) Did: found father in shirt and pants with head round number 4 door. They’re OK. That one missed our turning.’

Went down leaving father talking. Mother said that some of our windows were gone – go up and see: rushed up, looked in nearly all the rooms. Saw from number nine window on top landing a tall column of smoke rising in St George’s Terrace direction. Rushed down very fast, planes audible when I got to basement. Mother with neighbour on hall floor, advised them to go down and they did to basement, found camera and exposure calculation. Argued a bit with mother about going out. Father down in basement by then. Went out into area and up steps, saw people on their steps, came back (may have heard a plane) in area found a bomb fragment still too hot to hold – which shown to mother and neighbour retained its heat a long while.

Wandered into area and up steps and up slowly to St James Street, where on the corner glass from Second Hand Shop in the road. Walked towards the direction of the smoke ie along St James Street, a few smashed shop windows along it: at the bottom of Bedford St I saw wreckage across the road and walked towards it. Appeared to be a direct hit on Clapham’s Baker’s Shop – thought poor old Clapham. APR and Police and other people running around. Two men covered with blood sitting on left hand pavement groaning and being attended to by unskilled friends. Argument over getting an ambulance or taking them to First Aid post. People running into remains of shop, went over to try to help. Didn’t know how to start and there were plenty there. Saw bloke about 19 I knew by sight for 15 years crying etc. Supposed his people hit, felt no sympathy, but only wanted him to shut up. Saw ambulance coming, wandered further up and looked along Hereford St, another bomb there, thought of girlfriend and walked up to Coalbrook Rd and looked: all OK in her terrace; went back, warden stopped me going down Bedford Place again, went along Eastern Rd, where many broken windows and down Lavender St houses in Hereford St damaged warden ask through broken windows ‘all OK in there’. Woman’s voice, ‘young lady injured, not serious’ and he went on further. Wandered around again looking at damage, Lavender St, Essex St along to Bedford St wrecked. Into Bedford St, wounded gone, blood about on the pavements, scarred walls. Hung about a bit and then saw friend and father going off to hospital (I then had a job overnight as night stretcher bearer – auxiliary fireman at the hospital).

When we were at the hospital told ‘this is no use she’s gone’ – or something like that – another – that doesn’t matter ‘take her in’, and we did and put her on a space on the floor and left her. Then I think another worker turned up and asked sister and we took another dead woman on a wood and canvas stretcher out of a room behind the main hall out onto a barrow and wheeled this across the road, where bumping it swayed unpleasantly up to the mortuary. Having brought out two others, wheeled trolleys and turned her over onto one from the stretcher, then back again on a second trip. I had the legs end, which were a pale pasty flesh colour with the back part of the left leg shattered at the knee and being just meat. Took her in, stuffed some corpses closer together on mortuary floor and cleared up to make room for a lot more. Went back to FAP and a worker asked in a whisper for more deceased and nurse said she didn’t know but she didn’t think so – felt strangely disappointed – the nurse ‘oh yes, there are two children in there’. Went into room behind the main hall and two small, still bodies on stretchers, picked up the nearer – a girl – carried her out in the same way and up to the mortuary. She bumped and swayed a bit on the way across the road so I said ‘be careful or she’ll be in the road and we shall be in the soup’. He said ‘yes, we shall by God.’ Dumped her down on the mortuary floor close to the others. Uncovered her face and had a look at her.

Elementary school girl, her face a little dirty with some dried blood on it and skin a queer soft waxy colour. Came away to get the other. When we got there there was a nurse and a couple of men wanting either to take it – a little boy about 8-9 years out the back way or cover him up better with the blanket or get another. After much talk saw a blanket on the stretcher and the boy was covered. ‘His mother out there, she’s hurt, we want to spare her the shock of seeing him like this’, carted out dead through a hall full of injured. Shifted him out the back anyway down an awkward flight of stairs, after a lot more talk up to the mortuary and so on doing similar job all the afternoon.

Was taking the barrow down just after this when a light van, with Ambulance on it in red, drove up and we directed it and helped it back towards the mortuary: two more, built to take four, two per side. Moved the lower one on side first. Then the second one higher up was a job and while doing it grazed the thumb and finger of my hand.

First one was a very heavy old woman, second a man – only knew from the stockings, shoes and trousers, as they were covered and left them so. Thumb was bleeding, asked where I could get some antiseptic – First Aid Post – but wasn’t going to worry them when they’d got near dead folk needing attention. Thought of nurse on duty in nearby Howard Ward and she fixed it with iodine, tho’ said I should go over to FAP as if wound turned septic she was responsible. Saw dead woman I’d lifted into FAP brought into mortuary. In there in the chapel, which seemed to be thought a terrible thing, was a man with a dark blue tin hat on the stretcher with FAP on. There was a small hole torn thro’ the rim of the helmet – three thicknesses at the edge. ‘His tin hat didn’t save him’.

Recurrent thought quite without any joy of memory of girlfriend, wondering where she was and if OK and imagining, almost at times unemotionally, her looking like these people, thought going from enlarging portraits of a girlfriend to carrying corpses about was a bit of a contrast.

Later in FAP – a bit cleaner – saw a woman (Civil Defence) clearing up blood patches from the parquet floor – thought what a bloody waste of time – she could be doing something more useful.

Saw someone, a fool I’d often given lines to at school, with a dozen cuts to his face, daubed with yellow iodine, looking like a hero; swearing ‘bloody shame, our shop ruined’. Much later saw his arm in a sling, got splinter in it, not serious apparently. FAP being cleared. I went to friends room in hospital for ‘cuppertea’, which was welcome and good. Then after some other things I suppose, I don’t remember – home looking at damage on the way. The all clear from the lethal raid had gone two thirds of the way through and another warning gone, so had stopped at the hospital until all clear again. (Had not previously seen a corpse, hence the interest in them).

This extract is reproduced with the permission of the Trustees of the Mass-Observation Archive, the University of Sussex.

War broke out at the beginning of September 1939 but for roughly eight months it was all quiet on the Home Front as the uniformed civilians, who made up the greater part of the armed forces, called it. But when the German tanks over-ran Belgium and France in May 1940, the epic retreat of the British army from Dunkirk brought the Kent and Sussex coasts right into the firing line of the war in the air.

Much disruption of ordinary life took place in civilian Brighton, even more in London, so constantly raided from the air with incendiaries and high explosives by day and night. But Brighton had many unpleasant ‘incidents’ as they were called in ARP (Air Raid Precaution) language.

The accounts which follow tell the story of how civilian life in Brighton carried on in difficulties such as grief, danger, loss of belongings and lack of sleep. This might seem to us unbearable for people who, along with all this, had to fend for a family. But they not only bore them, but bore them without fuss, almost took it all for granted.’ There’s a war on!’ In particular, the typically unemotional, unexcited style of the Intermediate School Log Book gives a vivid picture of the dark days of 1940-43. The awkwardness of staffing a school divided between Brighton and Yorkshire; of losing members of an already depleted staff almost without notice for a week or two when husbands came home on leave; of lessons interrupted by air raid warnings, are never mentioned. This was the real stuff of the Home Front. The final entry ushers in a new era in education, hoped and worked for throughout the dark days of war.

Elfrida Oldfield

Excerpts from the minutes from the Log Book of the Intermediate Girls School York Place Brighton School Year 1939/40

Monday Sept 18th 1939
School reopened with sessions 11 am -1 pm and 1.30 – 3 pm war having broken out on September 3rd. The expected Year 1s were not admitted.

Thursday Sept 21st
Respirator drill was successfully practised, and respirators were tested by two Air Wardens.

Thursday Oct 5th
School closed at 4 pm for three days, to allow the staff to make a billeting survey.

Wednesday Oct llth
School reopened at ll am and the new Year’s pupils were admitted in the afternoon.

Thursday Aug 8th
For the first time the Air Raid Siren sounded during school hours – at 9.30 am. The School went down to the trenches, and the ‘All Clear’ was given at 9.50. A second warning was given at 11.45 am and several girls already dismissed, returned to the school shelters.

 

Monday Aug 26th
At 10.45 pm last night the Boys’ Department was hit by enemy incendiary bombs, the roof and top storey being badly damaged. It was decided not to open School until September 16th, the week from Sept 9th being, in any case, a holiday.

During this enforced holiday, two pupils who had just left the school were killed in a daytime bombing raid on Saturday Sept 14th at approx. 3 pm.

Joan May Cordier d.o.b 11.2.25, Flat 2, 47 Essex Street, Brighton Freda Harris d.o.b 29.5.26, 26 Freshfield Street, Brighton.

[These facts had been clearly marked against their names in the Admissions Book in red ink.]

Thursday Sept 24th
A German lone raider suddenly swooped over the School, which was providentially saved, and dropped bombs on two streets off Albion Hill, and a time bomb near the Technical College. Two pieces of bombs were found in our playground. Last Friday Sept 20th, whistling bombs were suddenly dropped in Franklin Road by a lone raider. Year 1 at games for the first time, had to fall on their faces on the ground. No siren was sounded on either occasion.

Monday Sept 30th
Sirens having sounded, the School was in the trenches from 9.30 – 11.50 am, from 1.30 – 2.30 pm and in the case of some girls shopping locally or still near school, from 4.15 – 6 pm.

Tuesday Oct 1st
The School was in the trenches from 1.30 – 3.30 pm.

Wednesday Oct 2nd
The School was in the trenches from 9.55 – 12.37 pm.

Friday Oct 4th
The School was in the trenches from 1.55 – 5.35 pm, though some of the parents came for their daughters after 4 pm.

Monday Oct 14th
The School was in the trenches from 11.40 am to about 2 pm when girls with their parents’ authorisation were allowed gradually to go. Those without remained till the sounding of the ‘All Clear’ at 3.10 pm. There was no afternoon session.

Friday Oct 25th
490 pairs of earplugs for distribution to the School, have been received. The School closed at 4 pm for the Autumn holiday. Owing to continued air raid warnings all day, except for brief dinner hour intervals, registers could not be marked, and only those girls who had arrived very early attended school.

Tuesday Nov 5th
School reopened at 9am, the hours of work being 9 – 1 pm and 9 – 12 pm Sats. Extra homework is being set.

Tuesday Nov 26th
Mrs Humphrey was absent attending by permission a ‘Spotter’ course for training in recognition of hostile planes. The course continued until Friday and was concluded the following Thursday.

Friday Dec 20th
For the first time, there has been a full week without an ‘alert’ period in school hours.

Monday Jan 27th 1941
Normal hours of work (9 – 11am & 1.35 – 4.30) were resumed.

Friday March 14th
The School has been closed every afternoon except Monday to allow for preparations for voluntary evacuation of schoolchildren.

Sunday March 15th
82 girls and 3 staff, including the Senior Mistress, were evacuated to Sprotbrough near Doncaster. The Secretary went as a helper.

Friday April 4th
The School practised going into trenches while wearing respirators. The Headmistress resumed duty (off under medical orders from March 24th).

Monday Sept 28th
The School Canteen was opened, dinners being served to 152 girls. Members of the WVS [Women’s Voluntary Service] did the serving.

Monday October 12th
The dinner girls, numbering 154, had a providential escape when a German lone raider dropped bombs near Preston Circus.

Monday March 29th 1943
The School was providentially saved when German raiders dropped bombs in districts including Gloucester Place and on the School Clinic.

Friday April 16th
The School was closed in the afternoon as Brighton Schools had raised over £8,000 in ‘Wings for Victory’ week.

Tuesday May 25th
The dinner girls had a providential escape when German bombs attacked Brighton in a brief raid. Miss Garrow was absent, suffering from bruises and having her home seriously damaged.

Tuesday October 26th
Girls were measured for clothing coupons.

Tuesday April 4th 1944
The School closed at noon to allow the revision of billeting lists by the staff.

Summer Term 1944
School reopened at 8.50 am. Miss Bland was late, owing to being called out for Rest Centre duties when a German plane fell in St Nicholas’ churchyard during the night.

Tuesday May 12th
The School was closed in recognition of the large amount raised by the Brighton Schools during the ‘Salute the Soldier’ week.

School Year 1944/5
Thursday January 24th 1945
The Girls were dismissed as soon as they arrived because of the frozen state of the outside lavatories and the Housecraft Department.

Wednesday March 28th
This is the last day of the Schools working as a selective Central School in accordance with the new Education Act.

Summer Term 1945
Wednesday April 11th 1945
School reopened as a County Secondary School under the new Education Act.

I had worked at Allen West since 1935 as a Dictaphone shorthand typist. During the war the factory did war work, I think for the Admiralty. All the men over 30 stayed at the factory for war work and were not called up. Only the conscientious objectors were asked to leave.

On the morning of my 21st birthday, 30th April 1942, I was working in the office as usual. Suddenly there was a terrible bang and we all fell under our desks as we had been taught to do. Two planes had collided overhead and had come down onto a motorcycle shed. The watchman at the gate and a special constable were killed and the shed went up in flames along with my husband’s motorcycle.

My husband was a dispatch rider for the Auxiliary Fire Service which meant that he would rush off every time the sirens went, twice we were at the Hippodrome watching a show when the sirens went, he left me to find my own way home and rushed out. Once it was the night the bombs were dropped on Preston Road and they had to block the gas mains off with sandbags. The other time the bombs were dropped on White Street and the gas meters were blown out of the houses, and embedded in the roofs opposite. My father worked for the gas board and he said that when they retrieved the meters the money was all twisted, as if somebody had wrung it out.

Allen West gave a series of talks in the works canteen and we often went to the Documentation Centre which was in Ditchling Road near the Jewish Cemetery. We were shown how to work stirrup pumps to spray people down, and the different kinds of rubber suits which were available. I also typed for the Home Guard based in Gloucester Road.

Barbara Worley

BOMBS ON WORKING CLASS HOUSES

Casualties were caused in a South East coast town yesterday evening when a German bomber flew in from the sea and released several bombs. Some of the casualties proved fatal.

The bombs fell in a thickly populated working class district of the town.

People hearing the screaming of bombs dived for shelters, and bus drivers pulled sharply into the kerb. In the darkness people caught in the streets flung themselves down onto the pavement.

The bombed area, which involved several streets, was at once roped off and many families were evacuated to church halls in neighbouring districts where they were sheltered and fed at short notice.

Several public houses had to be cleared after the bombs had fallen and they are still temporarily closed today. Slight damage was done over a wide area, and brick fragments and scraps of iron railings were flung through the air into adjoining streets.

Evening Argus 19 September 1940

VICTIMS OF HIT AND RUN RAID: DESPERATE RESCUE EFFORTS

Rescue parties fought this afternoon to save the lives of a publican and his wife who were among those trapped under the wreckage of a public house [Lewes Road Inn] wrecked by a direct hit in a hit-and-run raid … this morning …

The raider hovered over a thickly populated working-class district and dropped two screaming bombs. Each scored a direct hit, one striking a group of workmen’s houses and the other the public house. Several casualties were caused, some of which were fatal.

Civil Defence workers pulled away tons of wreckage from the inn which was completely demolished. As they fought their way through to the debris they found the landlord and his wife were trapped and they conversed with the landlord as they continued to drag away wreckage to try and reach them. It was later learned that the publican’s wife was dead. The landlord directed the rescuers to a passage between two of the bars where he was trapped. They worked for three hours, but they could get no further response from the landlord.

Evening Argus 20 September 1940

AIR RAID TEST NEXT SATURDAY

… The Chief Constables of Brighton, Hove, East Sussex and West Sussex, in announcing this, state that if an actual air-raid warning is received before the advertised time, the test will not be carried out. Should the real thing happen during the test the proper warning will be sounded, augmented by the free use of the whistles by police and wardens.

The public can take the opportunity during the test of finding the nearest air raid shelters and going to them.

Evening Argus 1 January 1940

21.5.43
Evening. Phew! Daddy, Denny and I put up the Morrison Shelter. What a job – my hat!

25.5.43
A.M. at about 12.15 Brighton had its worst raid yet. 25 planes came over machine gunning and bombing. I was having Geography and had to get under the desk – I saw one Jerry swoop past our window. I was really scared. One boy went absolutely green. The house opposite was gunned. At home Mummy got very scared and went under the shelter. Daddy, walking home, rushed inside a shop after seeing bombs fall out of several planes. Bombs were dropped at: top of Eaton Place, Chichester Place, the other side of the Hospital in Eastern Road (about 200 yards from here) which was the worst, Bennett Road (near Whitehawk), St Mark’s school, … the gas works, all our gas went, the flats at Black Rock (where we were on Sunday) and where a soldier on the roof was blown out to sea with his gun, the viaduct in London Road (1 span was destroyed) … Arundel Road caught it, and Hove was machine gunned. Evening. I toured around the damage – it was awful.

29.5.43
Coming back on a no. 4 trolley bus we saw the funeral of the 2 children killed in Down Terrace, behind our school. And I saw 4 Jerry Vapour trails.

6.6.43
The family went for a tour of the bomb damage. Gosh! Those gas works are terrible; so are the flats.

7.10.43
Just as the new series of Tommy Handley was beginning, Wailing Willy, or Moaning Minny went. We went in the shelter when we heard Jerry. Then about 9 o’clock he dived. There was terrific gun fire. Some bombs may have been dropped – I don’t know. All Clear went at 11 o’clock. Wow! what a long siren.

16.10.43
We had another night of it tonight. The siren went at 7:30. The all clear went – the siren went again – the all clear went again and as there is gunfire now, I have reason to believe the siren’s gone again.

17.10.43
Wow! I’m fed up. At 2 o’clock morning the W.W. (siren) went and we went down S (shelter). Then at 8 am another W.W. went and heavy gunfire.

18.10.43
What a day. Last night Herr Jerry came over again we went down shelter. 21.10.43
Again last night at about 1 am our sleep was disturbed. J came over, there was heavy G and we went down S.

22.10.43
H.J. came early tonight and 2 sirens went at different times in the evening. A good many J’s came over and dropped a bomb in Bonchurch Road. Why don’t they leave us alone?

Diary written by A Simmonds, then a teenaged boy.

The raid on the Odeon Cinema in Kemp Town was one of the worst in Brighton, many people including children were killed. We also lost our local greengrocer family, who had shop in Lavender Street, though they lived in Hereford Street. Just around the corner from Park Street, where we lived at the Corporation Depot, was a pub called the Shamrock, many people we knew lost their lives there. A land mine was dropped in Bedford Street, and in Edward Street at the top of Rock Gardens where one of the ARP men and his family were killed on a Saturday afternoon. Dad left Mum in a shop and rushed to the Depot for the rescue team. A mother and child were buried after a bomb fell on a house in Norfolk Square, the team dug for many hours and luckily got them out safely.

Ruby Lindsay

Even now at the sound of the siren, that used to herald the approach of enemy aircraft, I get a strange feeling of sickness in the pit of my stomach. We lived in Wakefield Road, and I was six years old when war was declared and twelve years old when it ended. I went to Ditchling Road School (now the Downs School) and then in 1944 to Varndean School. There were shelters at the schools and we had to practise how quickly we could evacuate the classroom; in the early part of the war there was also gas mask drill. We carried our gas masks in cardboard boxes with string as a strap. It was a suffocating feeling with a strong smell of rubber when you put your gas mask on, and after a few minutes the perspex screen, which you looked through, steamed up.

The safest place in an air raid was supposed to be under the stairs, and in the flint cottages on the edge of the Sylvan Hall Estate the stairs were at the back of the kitchen and under the stairs was the door to the coal-hole. Mr Austin, who lived in one of the cottages, built a little bed in there for me. I would go to sleep in my own bed only to be woken if there was an air raid by my Mum and Dad, wrapped in a blanket, and carried by my Dad to Mr and old Ma Austin’s cottage. There I would be tucked away in bed in the coal-hole. I dozed but I was aware of the conversation in the kitchen between Mum, Dad, Mr and Mrs Austin, the sound of tea cups and the light filtering through the cracks in the door and the smell of coal dust.

After the air raid the children would be let out into the street armed with bits of old material and handkerchiefs, looking for bits of shrapnel from bombs and shells which we swapped with one another to try to get the best collection in the street. Sometimes these pieces of shrapnel would be red hot.

I remember the day Park Crescent was bombed by a low-flying hit-and-run aircraft one lunch time, probably in 1943. The pips sounded (after the siren sounded, there was another warning if aircraft were close by, known as the pips), my mother grabbed me and a little girl called Beryl Day who was having dinner with us, took us under the stairs and lay on top of us to protect us. When the ‘all-clear’ siren went we returned to the kitchen and what a mess met our eyes. The protective sticky tape across the windows to avoid splintering had not been successful, and there was glass and dust all over my food. Whenever I have shepherd’s pie and rice pudding I recall that day.

Ken Francis

I was a five year old girl living at 23 New Dorset Street. The day war broke out, I was in the yard putting my dolly’s clothes through the big wooden mangle, Johnny Keywood from next door was turning the handle. Suddenly the siren wailed, Johnny let go of the handle and my left fingers were squashed. My mum said I was the first casualty of the war! One month later we moved to 60 Nuthurst Road, Whitehawk and my youngest brother Tony was born here a few weeks later. We would put him in the large baby gas mask during air raids, he hated it and would cry.

We would all huddle together in the cupboard under the stairs during the air-raids, my older sister, eldest brother baby Tony, my Mum and me. My Mum had a lovely voice and would sing her heart out, trying to drown the noises of ack-ack guns and planes. I learnt the words to many of the wartime songs from her.

When we received the Morrison Table Shelter, all four children slept in it. I remember the night St Cuthman’s Church was hit and a bomb exploded in the cornfield behind our house, our windows were blown in with the blast. My Mum was on the couch, under a blanket, she was covered in glass. The next day I ran to the field on Wilson Avenue to see the crater made by the bomb. Another day we were running home from East Brighton Park as the planes were coming over. The soldiers at the anti-aircraft gun shouted to us to get into their tent, one soldier lay over our heads and told us to put our fingers in our ears. The gun fired at the German planes, but thanks to that soldier, my hearing and life are still intact fifty years later. We were then told to run home. As the second wave of planes passed overhead, we crouched in the bushes along side the cinder path. We watched bombs falling towards Elm Grove and Lewes Road areas, across the race course.

The Saturday the Odeon got hit, my Mum was shopping in St James’s Street, she left her shopping bag in the doorway of the Co-op and ran all the way to Whitehawk to see if we were safe. Later in the day, when the buses were running again, we took one to St James’s Street and sure enough, her bag of shopping was still there!

Eileen Alderson

Doodlebugs had a horrible sound, like a sort of a motorbike engine, and they were a little bit smaller than a plane, they just used to come shooting over with sparks flying out of the back of them, and people used to just stand and stare at them, waiting for the engine to stop. As soon as the engine stopped it’d crash down, everyone was waiting and listening. The Spitfires and the Hurricanes, used to just tip the wing of it and twist it back round and send it back over to France and Germany. I never saw one fall, but I’ve seen plenty turned round.

George Heffaran

People spent a lot of their time watching out for air raid attacks. One of the places they manned was Stanford Road School, where my father was school caretaker. On the high cliff overlooking the Brighton Railway line, where the line cuts through, you’ve got a very commanding view across the railway and the viaduct, you can see right up to the General Hospital up on Elm Grove. The school itself had three playgrounds, and each playground had its own air raid shelter system, each air raid shelter had two entrances, presumably because if one got a bomb directly on it you might be able to get out from your underground tomb via the other one. They were horrible; they had an electric light system, which consisted mainly of 40 watt coloured bulbs, so they were very dark. You went downstairs into the entrance which was a wooden slatted door. The only seating arrangement were some broken old forms which they used to use in schools in those days. The shelters were freezing cold and damp, even in the height of summer they were bitterly cold. The boys all had short trousers, and the girls didn’t have anything warmer, no one had tights in those days.

There wasn’t much to do when you were down there, and sometimes you were there for an awful long time. The teachers would start off by making you say your tables, and then you’d go through your pound shillings and pence table. When that ran out there would be some old comics, and one or two moth-eaten Rupert Bear books, with yellow covers. But the worst thing ….the sanitary arrangements were anything but sanitary … the arrangements were a bucket for both boys and girls. You can imagine how shaming this was for us at this age, had to go in front of everyone else, in the bucket. The bucket was emptied into a large open oil drum, and the oil drum wasn’t even emptied after each raid, so you can imagine what the smell was like. These are the sort of things you don’t read in the books.

We lived close to the London to Brighton railway line and sidings at Lovers Walk, which were a prime target as railways were very important. They were so much busier then, especially during the war. Shunting would go on from very early hours to very late at night.

Brian Dungate

We carried on as normal during the war except that we had an Anderson and Morrison shelter.

Returning from a sports lesson in Hove Rec one day we heard planes overhead when we reached the bottom of Shirley Drive. I had fifteen children with me and I quickly got them into the pill box there. We could hear the bullets hitting the roof as we hid, a man on a bicycle was hit in the leg as he passed by us. That happened the same day the viaduct was hit. Three houses up from us in Wilbury Villas lived Mr C V Hill, head of Southern Railway for the area. He was brave because he went up onto the bombed viaduct to assess the damage. He had an air raid shelter built under his house and a telephone installed in it.

During one night raid cows escaped from the dairy at Preston Farm in the Droveway. Mr Hole’s daughter was a pupil at the school and often arrived on a horse drawn milk float. This morning I was woken at 3 am by a dreadful noise in the front garden and on looking out I saw a cow that was obviously very frightened. The herdsman was down there trying to coax the cow back and he called up to me for a rope. I threw out the rope I used to moor my boat (this rope still hangs in the hall). The next morning the cow had gone and my rope was on the doorstep.

Muriel Anderson

I did an insurance round on my bike during the war. I came into the London Road the day the Astoria was damaged and got as far as Ann Street where it sounded noisy and dangerous, so I left my bike outside a butcher’s shop and ran the other side to a wool shop and crouched behind the counter. When it seemed quiet enough to come out, I crossed back. My bike was on the road covered with glass, the shop window had been sucked out. At Preston Circus the roads were strewn with glass, fortunately the school children from Elder Street had left before all this happened, or some would have been killed or injured.

Olive Larter

I remember the afternoon of 24 September 1940, when the Albion Hill area was bombed. I had gone on an errand to the little grocer’s shop in Dinapore Street, and whilst there a raid started. On hearing falling bombs, the shopkeeper, Mr W Parker, pulled me around the counter and we crouched down on the floor for some time. Although ceiling plaster fell down and windows were broken, we were unhurt. On emerging from the shop I was met by my anxious father looking for me. Bombs had fallen in Albion Hill and Dinapore Street. There was broken glass and rubble everywhere, and I recall a mobile canteen van was quickly on the scene (I think it was the Salvation Army) who supplied welcome cups of tea.

Olive Jordan

One day when I was at my work in a gown shop in London Road, several planes came over and dropped down level with the shop windows and then started machine gunning. We ran into the show cases amongst the coats and dresses. We could hear the bullets breaking the shop windows, and people screaming. It was very frightening. When it was over we realised that the show-cases were made of glass. It is incredible the stupid things one does in a panic.

Olive Masterson

At the Regent Ballroom one evening, the sirens went off and a red light flashed whilst everyone was dancing. Armed forces of all nationalities were enjoying the evening. Suddenly, through the glass roof, four incendiary bombs exploded at one end of the dance floor, setting it alight. Screams came from many young girls in a state of panic, all the dancers gradually filed out into Queen’s Road. Canadian soldiers doused the bombs before extra damage was caused.

Bert Hollick

There were fire watching duties to do at home, as well: seeing no one showed a light in the Blackout and keeping the stirrup pump, buckets of water and sand at the ready to deal with incendiary bombs. This was done on a rota basis and all the residents, if active and able, took their turn.

At night during some of the raids or when the siren sounded, we’d sleep in the Morrison Shelter in the dining room behind the shop. This was a large heavy metal cage-like thing with a thick top which sometimes served as a table when the sides which were made of metal squares were removed. A mattress at the bottom, then sheets and blankets and pillows and it was quite comfortable to sleep in. We’d take our ‘iron rations’, flask, biscuits, candles, matches and torch, tuck in the dog and cat, put up the sides and we felt as safe as houses! Thank goodness we didn’t need to sleep in it very often, but when the Doodlebugs started coming over, it was our refuge, many a time we dived for cover as one of these devilish things cut out overhead. They sounded like flying express trains, the first time we heard them. When I saw one going over with the flames shooting from its tail, it looked as if it had flown straight out of Hell!

Doreen Blake

A scheme to advise and assist Brighton householders to construct their own trenches was announced at the Town Hall yesterday. Groups of six householders would be advised to join together. The district architect would visit to pick a site for the trench and tell householders what should be done so that they could get on with the digging. It was hoped that those who could, would provide materials for supporting the trenches. Old bedsteads would do. Afterwards advice would be given on making a room in a house secure.

Evening Argus 11 July 1940

I lived in the Corporation Depot in Park Street which became a busy ARP Depot, with rescue teams and medical people. My Dad, Alf Lindsay, was the Depot Superintendent and a rescue officer, the team were a nice lot of men. I was nervous at first, but there was never a dull moment as we always had to be on the alert.

In the Depot was a lovely big Anderson shelter, we also had a Morrison Shelter in the house, but we usually went into the Anderson shelter in the Depot where we slept in deck chairs under blankets.

Ruby Lindsay

13 February 1941
Mr Baldwin who lectured on stirrup pumps and incendiary bombs, said one borough the size of Brighton had to deal with 1700 fires all at once. As we only have 119 firemen they would be unable to cope with it alone.

15 February 1941
I went yesterday to practise the stirrup pump but was the only one to turn up. I mentioned this to our cousin who said, ‘I think it better to join a party first and in any case it is not a woman’s job.’ He would not allow his wife to do it, walking about in the dark, and he would wait until the trouble comes and he would then go out and do what was needed. I cannot understand this attitude.

Olive Stammer

Food

Before the war Britain imported 50% of its food and paid for these imports by exporting manufactured goods. War meant that industry turned to producing war material and so our exports declined; imported goods were mainly destined for the war effort. The Germans set out to starve Britain into surrender with a submarine blockade which destroyed many ships and killed 30,000 merchant sailors. The Battle of the Atlantic was as vital to British survival as the Battle of Britain; and these events meant shortages, austerity and rationing for the British people. Rationing was brought in by the government so that both rich and poor would receive a fair share of scarce food. A flourishing ‘Black Market’ made big profits for some and enabled people with money to add to their rations. Rationing and shortages meant that providing food for the family became even more of a struggle for the poor, but they were now joined in this struggle by the more affluent; queuing and making the ration last the week was a great leveller.

A ration was devised with extra food for priority groups such as young children, expectant mothers and workers in heavy industry. Nutritionists have suggested that the British enjoyed a healthier diet during the war than before it; those who had eaten too much were forced to consume less, while the undernourished improved their diet. Britain never suffered the inequalities of diet and malnutrition experienced in most of wartime Europe.

Michael Corum

10 March 1941
Syrup, treacle, marmalade and jam now rationed to 8oz of one or the other per month.

19 November 1942
I have had kale, sprouts and cabbage stolen from my allotment.

I may not be able to get a ration of meal for the fowls until April so I shall have to continue trying to mince up fish heads.

16 December 1942
I did two hours unpaid overtime today, as I did two months ago, to help get off all the service coupons etc which have to go to the Food Office.

10 March 1943
To Co-op for my rations, no suet until the afternoon. Had to queue for fish for three quarters of an hour. Went to the Pavilion to register for hens’ food, cooked fish for dinner, then off to mind baby while the mother visited hospital. Then to Co-op for suet, the lady before me had the last lot, food is rather short.

Olive Stammer

Virtually everyone tried to grow something, wherever they could, so even very small backyards would be turned over to raising some sort of vegetables, or perhaps rhubarb, which was a popular way of filling someone for a dessert. You would find that most parks, or even in some cases, verges of roads and roundabouts were given over to some kind of cultivation, with things like root vegetables and rhubarb. People wouldn’t have thought of using bought fertilizers, there was great competition for horse muck.

Brian Dungate

The rations for one person, as I lived on my own, were very small. One finger of cheese for a week, and my meat ration was only enough to cover two days so I used to give it to my landlady for the Saturday and Sunday dinner. I think the rest of the week I must have lived on marmite and toast, and perhaps sausages. The offal wasn’t on coupon, but anyone working in an office all day, as I did, never got any because it sold out during the week to the housewives with families, who were able to get it because they weren’t working. By Saturday there would be nothing, I was permanently hungry.

Georgiana Lally

Do you know, I think we were better off, I think today we eat far too much. My daughter and I used to share a boiled egg. One day it was my turn to have the top, the next day it was her turn. We seemed to cope all right. And of course we were both very fond of sweets, so I used to try to save my ration of sugar and take it to Billets which was a lovely sweet shop down by St Peters Church. In exchange for the sugar you got some of their home-made sweets. Which was a treat, to have some nice sweets.

We seemed to get by, you know. I mean there was always bread and scrape, and a bit of jam or a bit of marmalade, but we never seemed to go particularly hungry, it’s surprising how we coped.

I had to give the allotment up, I couldn’t cope with that as well. We could get fresh fruit and veg, but you always had to queue, we had to queue for everything. But it was a way of life, we just accepted it, you know. Nobody was better off than you.

Phyllis Turner

I recall trying to like whale meat, but couldn’t face it even if it was disguised with onions. I used to make a dish of vegetables which now would be a good vegetarian dish: cauliflower, carrots, onions, cooked till tender and placed in a dish covered by a white sauce made with the cheese ration, which I think was 2oz, and covered with sliced potatoes and baked until brown and crispy on top.

J P Hollick

There was plenty of black market. I was night porter at the a hotel and there used to be lorry loads of this meat, beef, bacon, whisky, cigarettes, everything you could want. It used to go into the hotel, just into the back way, downstairs in the basement. There was a big lock-up store there. They used to sell it to the hotels, the public couldn’t buy it.

George Heffamn

Evacuees

An official estimate in 1937 expected the war to start with sixty days of continuous air attack against the main cities, in which 600,000 people would be killed. (In reality 60,000 civilians were killed by enemy air attack in the whole six years of the war.) To meet this threat a massive evacuation was organised. The whole of Britain was divided into evacuation, neutral and reception areas. Plans were made to move 4 million people, mainly school children and mothers with their babies, from the first to the last areas; that is from the major cities to the countryside and smaller towns.

In fact, in 1939 one and a half million persons were officially evacuated and two million moved to safety making their own arrangements. Most of those officially evacuated in 1939 drifted back to their homes just in time for the 1940/41 Blitz, when another unofficial evacuation began. Finally in the summer of 1944 1.5 million people left London under threat from the V1 and V2 weapons.

This was a massive exodus, a mixing of people which had a major effect on British society and individual lives. As never before ‘one half found out how the other half lived’, town met country and the classes were mixed up.

Brighton started the war as a reception area, receiving children from London. In 1940, as a front-line town, it became an evacuation area and sent some of its children away to the north.

Michael Corum

When our teacher at St Mark’s School in Arundel Road told us that we were going to be evacuated, none of us knew what she meant. I think we thought that it was a bit like a long annual Sunday School outing, and we were looking forward to going away. Why did we have to go to the clinic to be examined first? Why did we have to suffer the indignity of ‘Nitty Nora’ going through our hair with a steel knitting needle?

We all assembled at the school early one morning, with luggage labels pinned firmly to our coats, our few pitiful possessions in one case, and with our cardboard gas mask boxes on a string over our shoulders. We scrambled aboard the coaches that were to take us to the station and our new homes in Yorkshire, we thought it was exciting, so why was my mother crying?

After a while my father took me home. I still cringe when I hear stories of other, evacuees as some of them were badly treated. It is one of the worst memories of my life time, I am sure my mother never realised how unhappy I was.

Rita Packham

16 March 1941
The children leave this morning, more tomorrow and others on Tuesday. It appears there are about 13,000 children in Brighton, 5,000 were expected to go, but I think only 3,500 are registered, which is considered quite good when compared with other towns. Mothers with young children may go if they have friends or relatives in reception areas.

Olive Stammer

At the outbreak of war I was thirteen and our family home was at South Norwood. We had caring parents who decided that my eight year old sister, Brenda, should join our school party so that we could be evacuated together.

On Monday 4 September, after being checked that we were carrying our gas masks and that labels with our personal details were securely tied to our coats, our parents waved us off at Norwood Junction Station for a secret destination. Brenda was bewildered and tearful, and my mood swung between great apprehension and a sense of adventure, thinking that we might be sent hundreds of miles from home.

On arriving at Brighton we were taken to St Mary’s church hall in Surrenden Road to receive our pack of provisions, which included corned beef, chocolate and some very hard biscuits, which later helped in assuring a happy relationship with our foster family dog. We were then taken to a hall in Stanford Avenue, where billeting officers were busy fitting evacuees into homes. This was not such an easy task as I had been instructed by my parents not to be separated from my sister, but my school friend Sheila and I also wanted to be together. After what seemed hours of comings and goings, and shaking of heads, an angel of a lady agreed to take all three of us.

Our foster family consisted of a couple with four children whose ages ranged from eleven to nineteen years, who welcomed us kindly and took us around during the following days to discover Brighton. It was decided that we should share a school with pupils at Whitehawk, so each day we travelled on special double decker buses in convoy from the Fiveways area to spend half a day on academic work in Whitehawk, and the other half of the day at St Mary’s church hall, to enjoy subjects such as music, drama and physical education.

During the time we were evacuees the father of the family was away on business for a while, and the atmosphere in the house was even more relaxed. After tea, when we had taken our turn with the washing up, finished homework and helped pin up the blackout curtains, we evacuees with the two younger members of the family would occasionally arrange a programme of poetry, songs and party pieces, and inflict our limited talents on the lady and elder daughters who had befriended us. We were also allowed to have musical evenings with the wind-up gramophone and a larger selection of records than we had been used to. The furniture was pushed aside, the carpet rolled back and we danced to some unlikely rhythms. We kept up a correspondence with our family in Brighton and I came back on a visit in 1944. Sadly the lady who had looked after us so well died a few months later, but I am sure she would have given her blessing to my marriage to her second son in 1947.

Audrey Leaver

My husband and I had two evacuees from East London, John and Peggy, six and seven years old. I was surprised when undressing Peggy the first night to find her clothes were ‘sewn on’. I remarked upon this to her and she said Mummy always sewed her up at the beginning of the week. They had practically no clothes, so I set to and made some from clothes given me by friends.

When undressing John on the beach to go in the sea, the bottom of John’s vest fell off. I was told of another boy who would not put his foot in the sea, he thought it was boiling.

I found the children had head-lice, so I put a lotion on their heads and tied a head-square on, saying this was a lotion to do their hair good, so as not to alarm them. The next morning I removed the cloth and took it to the window to look at, when John said ‘How many have you caught, Auntie?’

Their father came to take them home when the parents had to pay for them, the government paid to start with. They did not want to go and cried very much. I’ve never heard of them since.

Olive Larter

Gas

One of the great fears of the British people during the Second World War was that poison gas would be used against civilians. In the First World War gases such as mustard gas had been used by both sides against opposing troops, and the horror of these attacks was part of the public imagination. Mustard gas not only attacked the lungs but could also cause blindness and burn unprotected skin. It could linger for a long time so protective clothing for ARP personnel and decontamination centres to clean affected victims, were necessary. There were also fears that a new gas would be developed that would penetrate civilian gas-masks and would be undetectable in an attack until it started killing people.

Gas masks were issued to the whole population, people were ordered to keep their masks by them at all times and there were gas practices, in which tear-gas was released in public places, to drive this message home. The gas mask itself was ugly and an uncomfortable object to wear; an ever-present and sinister reminder of the horrors of total war.

Michael Corum

Everyone had a gas mask, and like the other children I had a Mickey Mouse gas mask. It smelt of rubber, the adult ones smelt worse than the children’s ones, I couldn’t possibly put on one of the big ones.

They made you wear it during air raids from time to time, I don’t think I was ever exposed even to the remotest threat of gas, but my father had been in the First World War, and he still suffered from Mustard Gas poisoning which he got then, so he’d got a bit of a thing about gas, fairly understandably. He was strict that we all played the game.

Brian Dungate

We were issued with gas masks along with the rest of the civilian population. I can even remember the colour of mine now, which was a green material with a little press-button stud on the front. Occasionally we had to try them on at school. They were never used, I’m glad to say.

I can remember, one of the first times I put it on, the feeling you were going to suffocate and the strange noises which emanated when you blew out, and the smell of the rubber, and those sort of round snouts, rather like a pig, and of course they’d be steamed up inside, you couldn’t see out after a while, and a sort of window for you to see through, it wasn’t rigid, you could bend it.

Denzil Dawbam

Preparations for Invasion

When the Germans occupied France in the summer of 1940 Brighton became a front-line town under direct threat of invasion from the sea. As part of their general invasion of England German planners considered a parachute landing on the South Downs to cover a seaborne attack on Brighton. On the British side plans were made to defend Brighton and evacuate the town if the Germans invaded. Bank staff were informed that, if the Germans landed during office hours, they would not be able to contact their families, but would be evacuated with the bank’s money and papers on a special train from Brighton Station. Individual citizens were told that when the invasion was signalled by the ringing of church bells, they should keep off the roads (to free them for military traffic) and walk towards London wearing bright clothing, so they would not be shot by mistake as advancing German soldiers. The ill-armed Home Guard and army must have waited anxiously behind the barbed wire and mines planted along Brighton sea front, until the summer of 1941, when the Germans marched east against the Russians and the threat of invasion was lifted.

Michael Corum

You couldn’t go on the beach, but there weren’t any mines, to my knowledge. We didn’t take the boats out. The fishing boat that I took over was pulled up on the fishmarket beach, and there it died. It just rotted away.

And underneath the walk, along by the Aquarium, there was big, massive tanks of petrol, ready to roll into the sea, to set the sea alight in case of invasion. I suppose they must have held about ten thousand gallons. They were all the way along underneath the promenade.

George Heffaran

A ‘pill box’ at Preston Circus was disguised to look like a tobacconist’s kiosk. There were concrete tanks round the town to hold emergency water supplies. The Robin Hood garage area of London Road was mined and only one carriageway open, which was manned by sentries who asked for identity cards. Arrivals by train also had to show cards. Seafront windows were taped because of the guns, there were some at Lewes Crescent. You were not allowed on the front unless you lived there.

V Pumphrey

Preparation for invasion meant they removed things like signposts, which would help the enemy to find out where they were, and go to place to place if they actually made a landing. It was really quite a silly idea, if you think of it, the military after all normally have maps from some source or other, and would know where they were, whereas the local population tended to be totally foxed when the signs were removed.

Brian Dungate

Keeping Up Morale

Throughout the war the authorities were concerned about the ‘state of morale’. What it was and how it could be raised were topics of debate that reached no satisfactory conclusion. However, these discussions did result in the mounting of parades, patriotic entertainments and a barrage of posters issued by the Ministry of Information. Films like ‘One of our Aircraft is Missing’, ‘Target for Tonight’, ‘Desert Victory’, etc were used to boost morale. Even more important was the radio; Churchill used it for dramatic speeches and J B Priestly for a quiet fire-side chat approach.

In general, however, people preferred to escape in their brief moments of leisure; Tommy Handley poked fun at the vast bureaucracy created by the war, and people appreciated the sometimes ‘subversive discussion of The Brains Trust’. People expected a long war, but they had confidence in ultimate victory, whatever disasters occurred along the way.

Michael Corum

‘We were very friendly during the war, we just spoke to everybody, and everybody spoke to you. We were all neighbours together, this was when I was living in Carlyle Street. We all used to sit on the wall after tea on nice evenings in the summer, we used to chat about various things, our husbands and children; and topical things, not much about the war, and we used to have a little sing-song.

Phyllis Turner

Maybe by today’s standards the propaganda was naive, but it was effective, and everyone felt that they had to do their bit. Morale in my experience was always high, I never heard anyone discuss the possibility that we might lose the war. We would win, it was just a question of when.

David Pavey

The main way of keeping morale up during the war was again the radio. Because it was the main, and virtually the only method of communication, it played a very important part in people’s lives. When my father got up in the morning he always turned on the relay, because we didn’t have a wireless as such. There was just a choice of the home [service] and the light [programme] piped in. He would turn it on and listen to the news headlines, and morale was boosted by comedy programmes such as ITMA (It’s That Man Again) with Tommy Handley. There were a range of characters, ranging from Mrs Mopp who used to clean the Ministry Offices, and had some pithy comments to make, and there were enemy spies. ITMA was very fast moving for those days, much appreciated, with a lot of catch phrases.

Brian Dungate

We used to go to the Dome dancing sometimes when my husband came home on leave, a shilling I think it was. It’d be absolutely choc-a-bloc, you were dancing with all of them, not just your partner. Douglas Reeve did a good job on his organ, sometimes we used to have an orchestra, but not very often. We did all kinds of dancing, ballroom, waltzing, jitterbug, Charleston, everything if you had the space! It was on practically every night. They used to have to keep the troops entertained, we had such a lot of Canadians. They were a jolly nice crowd.

Phyllis Turner

We’d go dancing at the Regent three or four times a week, when I was off duty. This was in the days when the manager was a fellow called Lionel Stewart. He and Syd Dean were great ones for handing out free passes to the troops, but there was never a lot of trouble at the Regent when I was on duty in my capacity as a military policeman.

Jeff North

When the war came along my husband and I moved to Brighton and opened the Charwood School of Dancing, during the war I produced quite a number of shows at the Dome. There was a lovely dance floor underneath all those seats you see when you go to a concert there now.

We started the formation dancing on the south coast. We would only take absolute raw beginners, and we taught them the formations at the same time as we were teaching them to dance. At first there were couples with the boys and the girls, then as each boy was called up there were less and less, so I turned it into an all-ladies formation. That was the only way I could keep the entertainment going for the general public.

I had to get somebody to make the dresses. My mother made the slips, and the girls were helpful by sewing all the sequins on, so between us it was a family affair.

It was well received, we used to get the place absolutely full the nights we put the formation dancing on, it was like a cabaret during a general dancing evening. The dancers would stand back around the floor or go up into the balcony to watch. I also trained them to do other shows, I used to put on a special show on Wednesday evenings to entertain the troops when they were coming home. I put on a Hawaiian Night, a Rumba Night, and I used to dress them in the costume of the night, using the same girls of course.

Dorothy Charwood

23 April 1941
I met a friend who said women of twenty were being called up, and they were little more than girls and this was wrong. I pointed out to her that men of eighteen were being called up and they were little more than boys, but they had to fight.

10 April 1944
Several women at work are annoyed as they have to pay 2/- income tax weekly. They will come in late and leave early, this only makes it harder for the rest of us. Most of them go to amusements, buy fine clothes, coupons permitting and drink gin, so I have no sympathy with them; I have told them so. Most have an allowance from their husbands.

Olive Stammer

Saving, Recycling and Making Do

Rationing was only part of an austerity campaign attempting to curb civilian consumption, so that scarce resources could be diverted to the war effort. People were exhorted to avoid the ‘squander hog’, and were advised to collect salvage, to recycle waste, to make do and mend. There were recipes for stretching the rations and making a tasty second meal out of leftovers. When finally unfit for human consumption scraps could be turned into pigswill. People were urged to supplement their rations by ‘digging for victory’, using any spare ground to grow more food.

Not only food was in short supply, clothes were rationed so efforts had to be made to maintain and modify an ever diminishing wardrobe. The rag and bone man became a national hero and people sacrificed their aluminium pots and pans, hoping they would be turned into Spitfires. In this way it was hoped that shipping space would be saved and the German blockade beaten.

Michael Corum

There wasn’t a great deal to recycle, if you bought anything like bottled vinegar, you would take the bottle back and get a new one, or get it filled. No goods were prepackaged other than things like jam, which came in jars (it would be difficult to dole that out). Sugar, lentils, everything like that normally sold by the grocer, after being weighed out, was put into recycled blue paper folded into a sort of twisted cone like an ice cream. The quantities even for a family were very small, because rations tended to be one or two ounces a week. So even if you multiply that for a family of four or five you’ve got something like ten ounces, a small amount to wrap up. So the basic wrapping was this blue paper, and then of course you used newspaper. If you went to get potatoes, or anything at the green grocers, you always took along a wicker basket or a small bag, no plastic bags. They put the goods straight into the bag, they didn’t wrap vegetables.

As for clothing, you just made things last, rather than recycled them. There were clothing coupons, you couldn’t just go and buy clothes, you had to have the necessary coupons, for example the few women who got married had to somehow put their wedding outfit together by getting coupons from the family. It meant a great deal of saving and working out what you were going to do. In addition to that, people were adept with their hands, a lot of people knitted. That was certainly recycling, when things which were no longer wanted they were just taken apart and a new garment knitted with the wool. The women’s magazines, which were thin and badly printed, recycled paper again, were full of tips on how to unkink the wool when you unpicked it. There were recipes for carrot cake, for sweetening you used saccharine which is revolting… paradoxically people then had a remarkably sweeter tooth then now. People certainly would, if they could, put an immense amount of sweetening in tea or coffee.

Brian Dungate

Aluminium saucepans were donated for Spitfires, ornamental railings from parks and houses were taken for the war effort. People were allowed to keep chickens, allotments were free. Beer was not rationed but was in short supply, pubs might be open every other night.

V Pumphrey

I made everything you see, I’m not good at it but I did. I made my underclothes from lace, we wore cammi-knickers then. Nighties, I made them out of satin and I made the old halter neck style, so that you didn’t need so much material. You needed just the skirt and a band, and the back was bare. Evening dresses were made like that then.

Georgiana Lally

The Council supplied ‘pig bins’, two or three per street. This was collected and processed at the Corporation Depot Hollingdean, which gave out a sickly smell of cabbage leaves, potato peelings, etc.

V Pumphrey

Traversing the world on troopships, one was apt to forget home towns. I was most surprised, when going through Preston Park on a spell of leave, that all the railings had been taken down, and iron railings from private houses were missing.

Bert Hollick

I made skirts out of men’s trousers, slippers out of felt hats and teddy bears out of the lining of an old mack. We all made do by turning our coats inside out.

Dried egg and milk powder were used and I put macaroni through the mincing machine to make it taste like rice.

Barbara Worley

Visitors to Brighton

An important aspect of wartime Britain was the unwilling movement of people from well known home environments to some distant different place. Town children were evacuated to a countryside they had never seen before; men conscripted into the armed forces found themselves ‘posted overseas’, unwilling travellers for the first time in their lives. Women were directed from one end of the country to the other to work of national importance; families trekked each night out of blitzed towns to escape the bombs.

But people also came into communities from outside and not only from other parts of Britain. There were the allies; the Free French, Dutch, Poles and above all the Americans. Large numbers of Canadians moved into Brighton, it was from this part of the coast that the Canadians took part in the disastrous 1942 raid on Dieppe). Opinion about these incomers varied, some criticised the Yanks, the Canadians and other allies because they were ‘overpaid, oversexed and over here’; but others profited from these contacts in a variety of ways and widened their horizons.

Michael Corum

I don’t know how they found their way up Albion Hill to my parents’ pub, the Obed Arms on the corner of Dinapore Street, but we had two Canadian soldiers who became regulars, and got to know them quite well. I remember my sister sewing new shoulder flashes onto their uniform. We kept in touch for a bit after the war and were very sad to hear that one of them, Glenn, had lost both his legs, we presumed in the D Day landing, and eventually died.

Olive Jordan

We had Canadian troops in Brighton from the beginning of 1942. I did a paper round (thin newspapers then, only four pages), and I would call on Canadian billets with left over papers, and be invited into their cook-house at St John’s church hall in Knoyle Road for flap jacks and maple syrup, a new treat for me. I helped at their canteen and cinema shows and was paid in Sweet Caporal cigarettes. I attended their weapon training instruction, and at the age of thirteen could strip and reassemble a Bren gun blindfolded. I joined the ‘D’ company and cadets at Patcham, and was attached to the Home Guard Company at Preston Road/Carden Avenue.

David Pavey

The Canadians were very attractive to the girls, and attracted to the girls; this was because they generally had things which the local population did not have. They had cigarettes, sweets and confectionery of various kinds, they had chewing gum, which was considered a desirable commodity. As a boy, like many others of my age, I used to follow them round and say, ‘Have you got any gum, chum’, the standard phrase used. They would generally give you some, and also quite often bars of chocolate, which were quite unobtainable. The Canadians, of course, had other ways of doing things, and other ways of talking, so a lot of the expressions were taken up by the girls especially, who liked aping the sort of comments that they made. They were extremely keen on ice hockey, almost their national sport, and this had a spin off on to the local team of Brighton Tigers, famous then, and for a long time after the war, at the SS Brighton, the sports stadium, at the bottom of West Street.

Brian Dungate

In May 1942 the War Office ordered the ‘compulsory evacuation’ of the entire [Standean] farm, and my parents moved to a small place near Uckfield. Standean was given … to the Canadian Tank Corps for training purposes. It broke my father’s heart to leave and he was never the same man again. The area around Uckfield was later to become part of Doodle Bug Alley’.

In November 1941 I married. I should have been married in our parish church in Pyecomb Village, but since no one living outside the district was allowed to enter the Red Alert area, I had to be married in London. Before we were married, I had to obtain a special pass so that my fiance could come to stay at the farm sometimes.

Gwenna Taylor

16 May 1943
I fire watched this morning for three hours from 7am at the shop. I had two other women with me, one was very smart in a striped trouser suit, she looked rather like a wasp. She lost her boyfriend, a Canadian, he was killed at Dieppe, but now she has another one. Each time she heard heavy boots passing our shop she said, ‘Here comes Canada’, and rushed to the door to speak to them. Some turned out to be Home Guards, these she ignored. She can do the Jitter Bug and drinks beer, and is much admired by our manager.

13 August 1943
Extract from the Argus tonight: ‘In the expectation that a ban on visitors to certain coastal areas may be reimposed shortly, holiday makers are leaving in large numbers. Recent troop movements in the areas have been on a greater scale than at any period since the beginning of the war, and there is much speculation as to the purpose of this immense activity. Roads leading to the various areas have been carrying exceptionally heavy military traffic for some time and army movements in these areas by rail are on an equally big scale. Some lines may soon be barred to civilians. Very large numbers of Dominion and United States troops are reported to have been moved into various areas, occupying new barracks, while additional quarters are still to be constructed. It is believed that school halls and other public buildings may soon be taken over to, provide further accommodation.

19 April 1944
Two Americans came into our shop yesterday, a private and a Lieutenant Corporal, both very smart in uniform fit for a British officer, both chewing gum hard, I was told a lot have passed through Brighton.

Olive Stammer

Return to Peace

The ending of the war came in a confused and complex way. People had estimated that the war would drag on for many years, although this was mixed with wild hopes that the war would be over ‘next year’. In the closing stages of the war Britain was finding it more and more difficult to maintain the role of a major imperial power, and was running out of money, resources and manpower just as Russia and America were becoming super-powers. The war in Europe did not end until 8 May 1945, by which time the British people had been at war for nearly six years, over a year and a half longer than the First World War. They then had to face the probability of a long and bloody ending to the war in the Pacific against the Japanese. Plans were being made to continue this war when the Japanese surrendered on the 2 September 1945 after the dropping of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Only slowly did people begin to realise the horrific nature of this new threat to humankind. As Europe was liberated and Germany occupied, the vast problems of reconstruction became apparent, while at the same time the first moves of the Cold War began to destroy the wartime unity of the allies.

In Britain relief was mixed with anxiety at the coming of peace. It was felt there would be no easy transition from war and the public were exhorted ‘to fight to win the peace as they had fought to win the war’. In fact rationing and austerity were to last many years after the war was over. These following reminiscences do not reflect this anxiety and exhaustion. There was relief and joy at the coming of peace and victory was celebrated in parades and street parties. Once more people could use promenades and beaches cleared of mines and barbed wire. The lights came on and people could enjoy each other’s company before returning to the rigours of peace.

Michael Corum

As an eleven year old waiting for a bus, on a bright sunny day in August 1945, I remember looking up into the beautiful sky and saying to myself, ‘No more Hitler bombs can fall and hurt me anymore.’

Eileen Alderton

It was very exciting! I more or less knew what day my husband was coming back, but I didn’t know the time. Beryl and Janet were at school and I was on my own in the house, waiting all day. All of a sudden there was a big bang at the door and I thought ‘Gosh, who’s that?’ It was Ted back from the war. I have never been so pleased to see somebody. We both cried and laughed together. Beryl didn’t come out of school till four o’clock. Janet was home first because she was younger, she was so excited, even though she didn’t know a lot about her dad. Beryl came flying in breathless, somebody at the bottom of the road had told her that her dad was home, and the excitement that she showed was really marvellous, lovely … it was a lovely homecoming, you can’t really describe it. You’re quiet, yet you’re happy.

There weren’t any problems settling down again, you just did your best to try to forget those years that you were separated. Everything fell back into place, we carried on with our life. The girls were very pleased to have their dad, Beryl in particular because she was that much older, she realised more than Janet what we’d all been through.

Phyllis Turner

VE Day 1945, never was there such rejoicing! Lights went on, fires were lit, it seemed as if all Brighton had congregated around the Clock Tower and West Street. At that time the road was made of tarred wooden blocks, these were ripped up and enormous bonfires were started. I walked home slowly at around 4am.

David Pavey

26 July 1945
What a poll! What depression amongst my customers when they heard the result, it is beyond my wildest expectations. What are your reactions and those of the officers? I presume Attlee will now invite Churchill to go with him to the meeting of the big three. We cannot expect great things from either side but it will be better for India, the Greeks and Russians and our miners. Amery is out. Vernon Bartlett in, thank goodness, also Bevin. Sussex is still solid Conservative, but with a lower majority. They said on the wireless Labour has never been so strong since 1906.

Olive Stammer

The first manifestations of peace weren’t that obvious, obviously there were street parties to celebrate the actual event, and they were quite fun, although nothing special by today’s standards. The parties … people put out tables with benches or seats just taken out of the houses, and put the best spread that you could on the tables, and had a good time. There wasn’t a great deal of celebration food, it tended to consist primarily of sandwiches, and these were almost always thin white bread, thinly covered with margarine and then thinly covered with fish paste, almost always sardine and tomato. You might, as an alternative, have the same thing, only with jam. The jam would almost always be nondescript, and you bought it by colour: red, yellow or whatever! The red was normally a mixture with plum. Other delicacies for children were jellies, which came in red, yellow, or green, had no particular taste other than sweetness; and a concoction called blancmange, made out of cornflower and milk, hated by every child I knew. It was prepared in moulds made in shapes like rabbits and quivered away on the tables, it looked much better than it tasted!

Sometimes someone brought out a piano, and if there was anyone who could play we had tunes like ‘Knees up Mother Brown’, and people doing giant congas down the street. There wasn’t normally anything else, there were a few gramophones, you tended to get pre-war ways of making music, such as people jigging their barrel organs. Every party that I went to somebody produced a barrel organ, it had a flavour of twenty or thirty years before, but was still great fun. The men, and I suppose the women too, but it tended to be the men, downed fairly large amounts of beer, Mild or Brown Ale. I didn’t stay up that late, so I didn’t know what went on very late at night.

Gradually, you could see things changing, the street lights came on for the first time, I had never seen a street lit up, it really was a shock. People didn’t have to put blackout up, and the few people who used their front rooms, and virtually no one did, would have the light on, still behind the curtains, which might be drawn, but there would be some kind of light shining from that house, which you hadn’t seen before. You no longer saw the moon and the stars as brightly!

I know that my own father was very keen that there should be a change, that something should happen as a result of the war, that it shouldn’t all have been for nothing. It was a time to have a new start, and this view was shared by a lot of people. The national government lost office, and we had the Labour government. They introduced a package of attractive measures, for example the National Health Service, which must have sounded like music to my parents ears.

There was a real desire for change.

Brian Dungate