Interview with Elizabeth Ann Rogers

Interview with Elizabeth Ann Rogers

Elizabeth's earliest memories include the family’s Anderson shelter, later replaced by a Morrison shelter where she slept during air raids. She recalls the sound of planes overhead and the impact of nearby bombings, including shattered windows and flying debris. Despite these dangers, Elizabeth never felt afraid as war simply became part of daily life.
Elizabeth’s family ran a grocery shop in Cleethorpes, and her father, unable to serve, joined the Special Constabulary. Elizabeth helped count ration coupons and remembers the strict warnings about butterfly bombs: 'Don’t pick up anything in the street. Not even a matchstick.' She describes the presence of Russian POWs in Cleethorpes, their polite demeanour, and their fear of returning home. Food was basic but sufficient, with homegrown vegetables and fruit. She recalls beans on toast and pancakes as childhood favourites.

2024-05-01

01:32:48 Audio Recording

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ARogersEA240501

AH: This is an interview with Elizabeth Ann Rogers on the 1st of May 2024. The interviewer is Anna Hoyles and we are in Louth. What year were you born?
ER: I was born November the 12th 1935 so when war was declared in September ’39 I was just two months short of my fourth birthday. So, and the first recollection I have of the Second World War is of the Anderson shelter that we had in the back garden. A corrugated Anderson shelter provided I think free of charge by the local authorities and I remember standing looking in it and it had got a lot of water in it and a dead rat floating on top [laughs] I can’t remember that we ever went into it. And then my father got an indoor shelter. That was called a Morrison shelter. Again I think they were government issue. I don’t know whether we had to pay for those shelters or not. So I do remember sitting in the Morrison shelter and sleeping in it and we must have had some water and food in there but I can remember a tin that they had that was I think yellow and blue and I think they were called cabin biscuits which I think were very very hard and probably something like dog biscuits [laughs] And then I can remember hearing the planes going over and when the bomb was dropped in the Sussex Recreation Park at the back of our house in Reynolds Street, Cleethorpes the, all the windows at the back were blown in. And I remember that particular morning I just don’t know how old I would have been going downstairs, going into the back room and the tiny table laid for breakfast and the windows coming in and the coffee pot, a green coffee pot flying across the room and landing at my feet. Years and years later I asked my mother if if I’d imagined that but she said no that had happened but she couldn’t remember what my reaction had been and I can’t remember. And then another episode was during the bombing of Campden Crescent which was the street adjacent to Reynolds Street and bombs were dropped there and that’s when all the front windows of our house were blown in and on that occasion I’d come out of my bedroom, got to the top of the stairs and the landing window flew in. And again that’s something I asked my mother about and she said that was true. That had happened. But again she couldn’t remember what my reaction had been and I can’t either. I can hardly think it must have seemed like an everyday event to me but I can remember those quite clearly and my grandma used to, when there was an air raid she used to stand at the front bedroom window and she could see I suppose the bombing lights over Grimsby. And on one occasion this German plane came down the street, it must have been quite low and she looked at the pilot. He had his flying helmet on and his goggles. He looked at her and then he went on his way. At the bottom of the street there was some allotments so I can only think that he would have been going over the allotments in the direction of the Old Clee Road but would then get out over the North Sea to get back to wherever he’d come from. But on another occasion when a plane came down the street the young lady who lived opposite, I think she would have been about eighteen at the time, Evelyn Innott she didn’t like going into the shelter. They had an outdoor shelter. She was standing that day at the bedroom window and this German plane came down and she was killed. He fired and she was killed and I do remember her funeral as well because I think she’d been a Girl Guide and there was a procession in the street when she died. What else can I remember?
AH: Was that common then? That planes came down the street?
ER: It, well it must have been and it does seem very strange to me that the planes were so low but I just don’t understand that. I really don’t. But I know grandma talked about it. Making eye to eye contact almost with this [laughs] this German pilot. And what else can I remember? Oh, my father. He couldn’t be called up because he was deaf but we had the grocery shop and my father joined this special constabulary in Cleethorpes and I’ve got his book somewhere for his patrols that he had to do. And he had to say be at the Electricity Showroom at the bottom of Isaacs Hill in Cleethorpes say at 9 o’clock at night and then by say five to ten he had to be at the Royal Cinema near the railway station and about fifteen minutes later he had to be at the entrance to the pier at Cleethorpes and he had to keep a record in this book and it would be when he’d finished his duty I think he had to go somewhere before he came home and it was signed by somebody. And my cousin Bill, seven years older than me, he wasn’t old enough to be called up but he told me he acted as a runner for these special constabulary gentlemen and used to take messages to them. It’s a pity he’s not alive now, my cousin Bill because he would have been in his early nineties and he would remember more than I could. When we were bombed and the windows came in on both occasions I had to go around to live with Bill’s mum who lived in Douglas Road off Suggitts Lane in Cleethorpes and she hadn’t got an air raid shelter so when there were raids there then we used to sit under a big wooden table in the kitchen. And I remember one time she had a lodger. He was Irish. He was called Paddy and I think he was in England to help with the rebuilding of railways as and when necessary but I do remember him sitting under this table. He must have had a rosary and all the time he was under the table he was muttering Hail Mary’s, I think. ‘Hail Mary Mother of God.’ Something like that in this lovely Irish accent. I don’t know how long he was there for but it just sticks in my mind.
AH: Do you remember being afraid?
ER: Afraid?
AH: Yeah.
ER: No. It’s funny that Anna. I don’t. My children ask me that and I say no. I can’t ever remember being afraid. I think like say children in Northern Ireland at the time of the Troubles growing up it was just almost seem as a way of life. A normal way of life. But when war was declared I wouldn’t have been old enough to, you know notice such a big difference maybe or not be aware of it so, no as I said to my children I can’t ever remember being afraid. One thing that sticks in my mind. The very words to this day. Butterfly bombs were dropped in Grimsby and Cleethorpes and Ipswich I believe. These were the first places in England to get these butterfly bombs. I didn’t see one. I can’t remember ever seeing one but at school and again I’m not sure when it, which year it happened so I don’t know how old I was but at school I remember an official gentleman came in a uniform maybe police, maybe fire officer and told us that we hadn’t to pick up anything in the street and he said, the exact words have stuck with me all these years. ‘Don’t pick up anything in the street. Not even a matchstick.’ And you know those words have stuck with me from being goodness knows how old at the time six, seven and here I am at eighty-eight and I can hear those voices. That voice quite clearly still. And the other thing we used to do at school was collect books which I suppose were for servicemen and I don’t know how many you had to take to get a little yellow badge I remember and so say maybe when you’d taken ten books you got a badge and I remember having a little cluster of badges in yellow which I had attached to my gas mask bag and my gas mask as I can recall or the bag was a silvery grey colour with I’m sure it was a Mickey Mouse face on it. I wish I’d kept it. It would be interesting to have that now. So what else?
AH: Was your school open all through the war?
ER: Oh yes. I can’t remember school ever being closed. No. No. The only time I can remember school being closed was after the war. The bad winter of 1947 when I was doing the scholarship and the, we had, I went to school, the boys and girls doing the scholarship. We went to school and we had lessons that January time in the headmistress’s room or the staff room which was very very nice because both those rooms had coal fires so we were warm and comfortable. Of course coal was still rationed then in 1947. Yes. So that’s the only time I remember that school had been partially closed.
AH: What was the scholarship for?
ER: To go to the Girl’s Grammar School in Cleethorpes which I passed. I don’t know how because I always felt I, once I got to the Grammar School I really struggled. I felt so [pause] but I’m trying now to think what else. I’ll just look what I jotted down to remember to tell you.
[pause]
ER: No, I think I’ve remembered everything. Yeah. I haven’t got, there’s people you know who could be three or four years older than me who will have far more vivid memories. Yeah. That’s butterfly bombs. Yes. That’s, that’s everything I jotted down.
AH: So you were born in Cleethorpes.
ER: Born in Cleethorpes. In Reynolds Street. Yes. Yes. And —
AH: And where were your parents from?
ER: Parents? Well, my father was born in Cleethorpes in 1907 and my mother was born in Cleethorpes in 1917. Yes. So what else?
AH: You mentioned a grocery shop.
ER: The grocery shop on High Street in Cleethorpes. Yes. My great grandfather, William Sheardown, he’d left either Great Carlton or Little Carlton I’m not sure which one it is when he got married and came to Cleethorpes and got this property on the High Street and opened the grocery shop and my grandfather worked in it and then my father of course had gone into it. When war was declared —
[recording interrupted – background static]
ER: I suppose she had the option of either being called up into one of the Services or going to work in the munitions factory which was in Cleethorpes. Wonderland at the end of the promenade, the northern end of the promenade and she went there to work. So my mother went into the shop. Yes. And she liked it and she stayed in the shop and my grandma, oh yes my grandma, my mother’s mother she’d gone down just a few weeks before war was declared. She’d gone down to I think it was Romford. It was certainly in Essex to visit relatives, her niece and my father realising that war was going to be declared sent her a telegram because they hadn’t a telephone down there. Sent her a telegram and he’d worded it apparently, ‘Return home immediately. War imminent.’ So after that, allowing time for grandma to get herself gathered together he went down to Cleethorpes Station and met the various trains that came in from London, far more of those in those days then there would be today and eventually he met her off the train. And at that time my grandma was living with another daughter, my Auntie Peg. But my father thinking that he might be called up because he really wanted to go into the Navy he asked grandma if she would come and live at Reynolds Street because he didn’t like the thought of my mother and me being us being on our own during the war years. So she agreed that she would. So she obviously must have moved her luggage from Auntie Peg’s to our house and she stayed with us, really brought me up because after the war my mother didn’t want to give up work. She liked it in the shop. So grandma stayed with us and kept house until the day she died. Yes. So, but she was from Sunderland area, Grandma Elliot. So and then the other thing I can remember but I don’t know whether this would have been after the war helping my mother and father count the coupons from ration books. And on a Sunday evening my father would empty all the coupons out and they were in strips of A, B and C and I think four, four coupons in each strip and they had to be counted and put into their groups of A, B and C. And my father used to take them on a Monday morning around to the Food Office which was in the marketplace at Cleethorpes and I suppose once I learned to count I don’t know whether I would have done it during the war years but of course rationing lasted for a long time. So whether it was after the war was over and I would help them on the Sunday evening to count the coupons. So yeah. So I think that might be as much as I can remember.
AH: Do you remember there being a lot of bombings?
ER: Hearing a lot of bombing?
AH: Yeah. Or being in the shelter a lot.
ER: No. I really couldn’t say. We obviously, I didn’t sleep in the shelter every night. The fact that on those two occasions daylight hours, breakfast time when I was getting up the windows came in so we didn’t automatically sleep in the shelter I really don’t know. Well, I suppose it would just be when they heard planes coming over. If I was asleep in bed maybe they just gathered me up, took me downstairs and put me in the shelter. So, but I do remember my mother and grandma in the shelter as well and of course my other grandparents, Grandma and Grandpa Sheardown, they lived on Grimsby Road, Cleethorpes. I guess they must have had a shelter but I, I can’t remember. No.
AH: Do you remember what you felt about the shelter?
ER: Well, I don’t think it bothered me. I can’t remember crying or being upset at having to settle down in the shelter to sleep. Probably just thought it was [pause] well again maybe thought it was just a normal thing or an adventure. I really don’t know. Looking back I feel like I haven’t very strong emotions really about the war. Not while it was actually happening. But I don’t think I could have been a hysterical sort of child that soon got upset and crying. I really don’t know.
AH: Have you felt differently after the war about it?
ER: I felt differently once I began to learn about the war and especially the atrocities and the concentration camps and you know the millions of Jews who lost their lives. Awful. The same with the Japanese camps as well. I, I find thinking about those absolutely horrifying. Yes. No idea, if the Germans had got to England I’ve just no idea how I how I would have reacted as a child. My parents of course would have been very defensive. No. It’s difficult to know. When I, let me think, it would be easily forty years ago when I lived up in Knaresborough I was asked if I would help with the WRVS. If I would do the Library Service for them in the small hospital that was in Knaresborough at the time, long since gone and I took a trolley around with books and one gentleman got talking to me. He said, because I hadn’t a WRVS uniform and you know I had a badge and so we are talking forty odd years ago when I would be in my late forties and he said how much he admired the WRVS because he had been in a Japanese prisoner of war camp and he said you could hardly bear to think about it but he said that the rumour got around the camp that the British or Americans were nearby. All the Japanese soldiers there just disappeared overnight and just left the prisoners and he said that the first person who walked through the gate and into that camp was a WRVS lady and he said more followed and the soldiers. I think they must have been British soldiers. I’m not sure. But he said this WRVS lady when she spoke to him she asked him what he would like to eat and he had said he would like a boiled egg and he said he was crying. He was so tearful and such relief and he said eventually she brought him the boiled egg and he said she sat him on her knee because he only weighed about six stone or even less and he said, ‘She fed me that boiled egg with a spoon as you would feed a baby.’ And he said he’d never forgotten that. So, and that made an impression on me. Him telling me that because I thought no wonder they cried and so forth. Men to see all of a sudden people arrive and know for them the war was over. Yes. Dreadful. So —
AH: Did you have any relatives who were involved in the war?
ER: Oh yes. My, my Uncle Jack, Uncle Tom rather, my mother’s brother. He was nine years older than my mother. He would have been born in about 1918 wouldn’t he? She was born in, no. Wrong there. He would have been born 1908. He was nine years older than my mother so in the war he went into the Navy and then my mother’s cousin who was quite a bit older than her he went into the Merchant Navy and we used to laugh and joke about it in the family and say that between Uncle Tom and cousin Alex the pair of them won the war between them. A bit like Errol Flynn in those films [laughs] but Uncle Tom and Alex they were in Monte Video at the time of the River Plate and the Graf Spee and Alex was on, now what was it called? Highland Monarch and Uncle Tom now I always have to think carefully about this whether it was Ajax or Ark Royal but I think it was Ark Royal. But they, they could see each other’s ships and knew that they were both there. Yes. Which you know they often mentioned. Remembering that they were both there at the River Plate and uncle, no Alex said that and I never knew for sure whether he was kidding me about this but he said during the battle his captain was in his bathroom and a bullet flew through the bathroom window porthole whatever. Missed him. But Alex said that I don’t know how long it was after the war and I think this captain went on to bigger and better things. That the King had shown a sense of humour and given him his honour. The Order of the Bath. But I never knew whether Alex might be kidding me about that one. I wish I could remember what he said the captain’s name was but I can’t remember. Yes, I’d just forgotten about that for the moment when I was jotting things down. So, so they both came through the war unscathed. Alex remembered about coming back from Suez on his ship and they got back. I don’t know whether that was still the Highland Monarch but they got back to England and they’d got all their summer gear on for the hot weather and they were immediately sent off to Iceland without any warm clothing at all he said [laughs] But of course Alex died about, oh ten years ago now and of course he was older than me but he had a good memory about the war. But he came out of the war. He didn’t stay in. Oh yes. I’ve just remembered this. Am I going on for too long?
AH: No. Not at all.
ER: You can edit this can you as and when necessary? Yeah. Cousin Alex when he came out of the war he had to have a kidney removed and he was in a hospital in Liverpool and a lady used to go into the hospital to do some visiting, Doreen and he fell in love with her. It was virtually love at first sight between the two of them and Doreen could play the piano by ear. Now, what she did during the war I don’t know for sure. It was some kind of Naval work I think in an office but she used to go to St George’s Hall in Liverpool to play the piano which was broadcast by the BBC to troops overseas and her brother, he was in the Army and he was in the Middle East and he, he off duty one evening he had the radio on and all of a sudden the person announced this concert from St George’s Hall, Liverpool. Doreen [Hanall?] I think was her surname. Doreen [Hanall] playing the piano and her brother said to the other men gathered around, ‘Oh, this is my sister.’ And apparently he’d always said what a lovely feeling it was that evening to sit and listen to his sister playing the piano. Yes. After the war the BBC offered Doreen a job for piano playing but in the end they wouldn’t accept her because she played by ear and she couldn’t read a note of music and of course if she was taking part in a live broadcast and her mind went blank she wouldn’t be able to read the music. So she, she missed the nice chance there but they got married in, I think it was 1946 or ’47. She moved down to Romford to live. Marvellous pianist. So that was an end of the war romance when Doreen and Alex met. Yeah.
AH: Do you remember the end of the war?
ER: Not really. It’s strange that. I can’t remember it. I think they had a street party in Reynolds Street because there was a room in Reynolds Street that belonged to the TocH and I’m sure they had, we had a street party there that I would have gone too but I really can’t remember it at all.
AH: What’s Toc H?
ER: Toc H. That was a Benevolent Society of some sort. I’ve forgotten the name of the man who founded it. Chad somebody. I’ll look it up in the dictionary. You don’t hear of them now. Now, you see most had a lamp outside their buildings which was very dim because people used to say about some person, ‘Oh, he —’ or she, ‘Is as dim as a Toc H lamp.’ [laughs] Let me see. I hope I can find it in here. [pause] No. I can’t. Oh, here we are. Toc H. Signallers code. A society formed after World War One to promote the spirit of comradeship and Christian fellowship. Ah, from its first meetings at Talbot House at Poperinge in Belgium. So Talbot House. Tal h. Toc H. It doesn’t say the name of the founder but I’m sure it was someone, Chad somebody. It will be on Google I should think if you want me to look. No.
AH: I can look later.
ER: You Can. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So —
AH: Do you remember ever being told anything about Cleethorpes in the First World War?
ER: Yes. I’ll have to think about this. It was to do with Alexandra Road. I think it was a Baptist Chapel that was bombed in the First World War. I think my grandma may have mentioned that. But that’s, that’s really all I can [pause] oh now [pause] Doodlebugs. Now what exactly were Doodlebugs? Was it hit by a Doodlebug? Have you heard of Doodlebugs?
AH: Yeah. Were they Zeppelins?
ER: Zeppelins?
AH: In the First World War.
ER: Yes. That’s what it was. Yes. I think it was probably it might have been one of the first buildings to have been hit by one [pause- pages turning] Oh. Doodlebug. Oh, that’s something to do with an insect. I’ll have another look. Oh yes. Oh. The V-1 flying bomb. World War Two slang. So [pause] I can’t, I can’t be sure about that. No. I can’t be too sure [pause] No. Nothing comes to mind and I wouldn’t know who to ask [pause] No. I’ll think on it. It might suddenly come to me but there was something about this Baptist chapel.
AH: I think I’ve seen it. I think it was a Zeppelin.
ER: You think so.
AH: Yeah.
ER: Yes.
AH: There were soldiers in the chapel.
ER: Yes. There would have been. Yes. It could have been used as a social place as well for soldiers to go to. The old Empire Theatre in Cleethorpes and Alexandra Road was used for that as well where the soldiers could go and my mother used to go in there sometimes to help and there would be writing paper and pens and ink provided for the soldiers.
AH: Did your mother do other things for the war effort?
ER: I think she was somehow involved with the WRVS which is why she would have gone to the Empire Theatre but I can’t remember anything else that she mentioned. No. So —
AH: Were you an only child?
ER: In any?
AH: Are you, were you an only child?
ER: Yes. Yes. My father was an only child but my mother was one of, the youngest of five. Yes. I’m searching around in my mind to see if I can think of anything else. I know my cousin Bill and I when we were talking. We always said it was amazing that the Germans never bombed Wonderland in Cleethorpes at the end of the promenade where ammunition was being made and they, they never hit that. Funny that. In fact, the only, the only thing I can think of is going back to that Baptist Chapel in the First World War. But I can’t, I think in, I don’t know in Campden Crescent I think some houses were destroyed there in the street adjacent to Reynolds Street. But otherwise —
AH: Don’t worry about it.
ER: There must have been more damage to buildings in Cleethorpes than I can remember. Our shop wasn’t hit. My grandparents on Grimsby Road, I dare say when that bomb fell in the Sussex Recreation Ground and our back windows came in my grandparents who lived on the main road probably their back windows would get blown in but I can’t remember that being mentioned. No. So —
AH: Did you ever go to Grimsby? Do you remember?
ER: I can’t remember going to Grimsby in the war years. No. I can remember but I think it would be when I would then be about ten or twelve my grandma and I going up to Freeman Street in Grimsby. She liked to go to the market but that was after the war. No. I can’t remember. But I know there were streets in Grimsby which obviously were hit.
AH: Do you remember seeing them?
ER: No. I can’t. No. I can’t. I think at the back of Freeman Street where the market was properties must have been hit there because I do remember it doesn’t really seem too long after the war tall blocks of flats being built there. I think they’ve been demolished now. I’m not sure. So, no I can’t remember spending a lot of time Grimsby at all [laughs] No. Just Cleethorpes. I can’t remember what the promenade was like in Cleethorpes during the war. No. Supposedly we must have gone down and walked along it but again I can’t remember. No. No, I just seem to remember my various cousins. You know, they would come around to our house in Reynolds Street, play in the garden with me that’s, that’s about it. I do remember of course going down to London after the war. My grandma took me down because after she came back from Romford when the war was declared the few days later she didn’t see the relatives down there. It was cousin Alex’s mother who lived down there and Alex’s sister and grandma of course was anxious to see them so as soon as it was peace had been declared we went down to London and train from Cleethorpes to King’s Cross and we stayed with Auntie Floss, Alex’s mum in Romford and well we would have gone up to London [pause] I can’t remember, on the Underground and I remember seeing the bomb damage in London and these tall flowers growing. Pink flowers and I remember asking my grandma about the flowers. How pretty they were and she said they were called rosebay willowherb. Yes. And so I do remember the bomb damage. And we went up to London on, it would have been VJ Day when the war had finished in Japan and the then King George the 6th and the Queen Mother as she became, Princess Elizabeth our late Queen and her sister Princess Margaret. We stood on the Mall in London and they came from the Palace in an open landau to go to, it would either be St Paul’s or Westminster Abbey but I think St Paul’s for a Thanksgiving Service. And my Uncle Tom who was in the Navy at the Battle of the River Plate he turned up at the house in Romford unexpectedly in his Naval uniform and he went up to London with us. And I remember I’ve got a letter that I wrote to my parents because Uncle Tom said to me when the King and Queen get back to Buckingham Palace they will invited us in for tea. So I’ve written this in the letter. ‘They’ll invite us in for tea — but they didn’t.’ [laughs] Oh dear. So yes. So, so we went up to London a few years after that. Grandma liked to go and see the relatives so I was taken around London to see the sights but of course that was all after the war.
AH: Do you remember seeing the King and Queen?
ER: In that carriage, yes. Yes. Quite distinctly. Yes, and I think the late Queen, Queen Elizabeth the 2nd she was dressed in blue I seem to think. I think somewhere I may have seen a photograph in a book of them in the carriage as well but I can remember seeing them quite clearly.
AH: Do you remember what you thought about it?
ER: Oh, I think I was excited because the two princesses especially I was interested in and I kept a scrapbook or two with newspaper photographs of them. Of course, you didn’t, there was no television. You didn’t see and hear so much about the royal family then as you do now and only the other day on Radio Lincs someone was talking about scrapbooks. I don’t know whether scrapbooks were going to be in an auction but I thought about my scrapbooks and I thought oh what a pity I didn’t keep my scrapbooks because I know I was always excited when there was a photograph in the paper of the princesses especially and I would cut them out and stick them in my book. Yes. Yes, so I would be very excited. I think probably more excited at seeing the two princesses than actually seeing the King and Queen. My father had a map in the sitting room during the war of Britain and Europe. I don’t know whether it covered Japan and that area but I know he used to obviously be listening about battles and he would put little pins in this map and I don’t know what happened to that. It was a pity that wasn’t kept but of course. I suppose after the war people were so thankful it was over I suppose that’s why they would get rid of stuff. We never kept a ration book from the shop. I remember my father and mother and saying that. How strange we never kept a ration book. I’ve still got my identity card. I don’t know how old I would have been when that was issued but I’ve still got my identity card from being a child.
AH: Do you remember when rationing ended?
ER: When?
AH: When rationing finished.
ER: I can’t remember [pause] when butter, sugar and such like came off ration but I don’t think meat came off ration until about 1952 and I’m not sure whether around that time there wasn’t some problem about flour and whether bread had to go on ration. But I may be wrong about that and I can’t remember when sweets came off ration either but perhaps that was around ’52. But the basic things I can’t remember. Certainly there was still rationing when the Queen married the Duke of Edinburgh because Australia for example sent I think a lot of sultanas and currants, dried fruit for the Queen’s wedding cakes. I don’t know how many wedding cakes they had but more than one. But Commonwealth countries sent food for, for the royal wedding. After the war I can remember my mother being very excited when all of a sudden bananas became available and at the shop we got some tinned salmon. We didn’t sell fruit and vegetables. Just provisions. But my mother was very excited when we suddenly got some tinned salmon and she was very, I don’t know when that would have been. She was very eager for me to have a banana because apparently as a baby I’d liked bananas. But I don’t think we’d ever seen a banana during the war and so on the same day I tried a banana and some of this tinned salmon and I remember I was sick and my mother was very disappointed that I was sick because she thought this was going to be so exciting having these two things.
AH: Were you sick because you didn’t like them or —
ER: Yes. I didn’t have a banana for a long time afterwards. I think I’d, you know got into adulthood before I eventually tried another banana but I seem to remember I liked tinned salmon. I didn’t go off that. But we didn’t have tinned salmon very often in those days because I can remember this would be after the war when we had family Christmas parties. My mother would make some salmon, tinned salmon sandwiches and you know Christmas oh having these tinned salmon sandwiches that was quite a luxury. Yes. But of course now you can get every food you can think of all the year round can’t you? Nothing is a luxury these days. Yeah.
AH: Do you remember what it was like getting off the train in London the first time after the war?
ER: I loved it at King’s Cross. It was the smell of the engines and the whole atmosphere and the people and the bustle. It, you know would be so unusual to me and I was, felt really excited when we, when we got to King’s Cross and then from King’s Cross I think we went to Liverpool Street tube station and that and that’s when we would get the train out to Romford. I can’t remember how long that took but yes, King’s Cross. Very exciting. That certain smell of the engines. Yes. I can’t remember the railway station at Romford at all. No.
AH: What about Cleethorpes? Did you catch the train from Cleethorpes?
ER: Yes. Yes, I can remember Cleethorpes. The station it hasn’t altered all that much. Yes, getting the train from Cleethorpes. Yes. And back to Cleethorpes and my friends that come down from Knaresborough although sadly Mary won’t be coming this year because she died last year but Tim is coming. But over the thirty years that I’ve lived here Tim and Mary have come every year, sometimes twice a year to have a week with me and of course when they’re coming on the train from Knaresborough I meet them at Cleethorpes Station and it hasn’t really altered at all. No. So, quite a nice station really with being next to the promenade and the sea. Yes. Yeah. And of course going down to London after the war the train used to come to Louth. Not that I can remember. Thursby. That was another stop apparently and I think there were a few other stops on the way and somewhere which I looked out for there was a field which had a large model of a black and white cow in it. Where that was I don’t know but I always used to look out for that. And then when you approached and I imagine it’s still the same when you approach King’s Cross you went through seven tunnels before you got there. All of a sudden the lights would come on on the train and then it would be darkness and I remember counting the tunnels. Yeah. Train travel was quite nice in those days I think. Well, I can’t remember when I last went on a train. A few years back. But you sat in, sometimes you sat in a compartment with a table but sometimes where you sat on the seats facing each other and over each seat there was always a nice painting of a building or a garden or somewhere. It would be named you know. It would be a place that people would know. I often wonder what would have happened to all those paintings. It was really nice. Yeah. So anything else?
AH: Did there come any refugees to Cleethorpes? Not refugees. Evacuees. Or refugees perhaps?
ER: Oh. I can’t remember ever seeing any or knowing of any. I didn’t know them but my father had attended the Matthew Humberstone Boys School in Cleethorpes and one of his teachers and I think he was a German teacher, an English man, German teacher was called something like Mr Gayfor and he used to go to Germany on holiday. He was very friendly with [pause] I don’t know whether he was a teacher or a professor over there and I don’t know which part of Germany but I do remember not at the time but my parents saying now before war was declared Mr and Mrs Gayfor they hadn’t any children and his teacher friend over there asked if he could send his two daughters over here to England to be with the Gayfors. Now, whether they were a Jewish family I don’t know but and I never met them. I can vaguely remember Mr and Mrs Gayfor but by the time I would know them these girls would have, because I think they were teenagers and so by the time I knew the Gayfors they would have got careers. I don’t know whether they ever went back to Germany but I do seem to recall that both the girls were very clever and I think they went to university in England. So, I’ve forgotten about that until you said about refugees Anna. But of course I can remember the Russian prisoners of war in Cleethorpes. They I believe were stationed in Weelsby Woods, Grimsby and I was at Reynolds Street School. The street I was born in. The school was there and I remember looking out some windows at school. I don’t know how many there would have been, not a, not Italian but Russian soldiers marching down the street singing the, “Volga Boatmen,” and when they were coming we were obviously allowed to get to some window and see them. But you know there might have only been two dozen of them but they certainly marched and of course they used to go into the shop because by then Russia was on our side so they could walk around and they used to go into the shop and I remember my father talking about this. They used to buy vinegar because they could take it back to camp, boil it, I don’t know whether they boiled it with potato peelings or what they did but it was quite, quite intoxicating and they used to get drunk on it and my father said that some officer, British officer from the camp came around to all the grocery shops in Grimsby and Cleethorpes saying not to sell them vinegar. It wasn’t rationed you see. So [laughs] and my father said that one day one of these Russian soldiers had gone in and he couldn’t speak English and he was demonstrating something to my father and you know my father he was looking around the shop. Father was looking. My father suggested or showed him some things. So he, my father thought it was something he wanted for cooking and he took him across to the greengrocer’s opposite us but no it wasn’t anything there. I think my father had got it in mind that he wanted onions. I don’t know why. Anyway, the Russian went off and a bit later on he came back absolutely jubilant and it was a knife he wanted, a chopping knife and around the corner from us there was Ernest Houghton’s ironmonger’s shop so I think my father found that he’d seen that shop and he’d gone in there and [pause] But when the time came at the end of the war and they were going to be sent back to Russia they didn’t want to go because they said when they got back they would be shot because of Russia, you know well something to do with failing in the war as far as Germany was concerned and Stalin. I can’t I can’t quite, quite get my mind around all that but anyway I think they must have, there must have been some battle where the Russians hadn’t stood their ground and had been taken prisoner by the British and that was at a time when they were fighting with Germany. I’m not too sure when they, I think it was 1941 when Russia changed sides and came over to us but they didn’t want to go back and I remember my father talking about it. And then because them some of them gradually did or did know English and picked up on English and one of them had told my father this and I don’t know how long it would be. Probably ten fifteen years ago I heard something on the radio and they were talking about that. These Russians that were sent back who were going to be, who would be shot and I, well I don’t know enough about it but somehow they were blaming Harold Macmillan who was the Prime Minister. I can’t remember when. In the ‘60s I think. They were blaming Macmillan for having the, made the order that they had to go back. But that’s not something I’m too clear about so I perhaps shouldn’t be quoted on that one. So, but they were. My father said they were all very polite and they were always very polite to my mother when they came in and they would when they were leaving they would click their heels and give a little bow. Yeah.
AH: What did the shop sell?
ER: Pardon?
AH: What did the shop sell?
ER: Oh, butter, margarine, lard, bacon, sugar, cheese and then I think there were limited amounts of, oh eggs. Beans. Tins of beans. Whether they were Heinz or not I don’t know but there was, there was tinned stuff available but of course all on ration and I think tinned fruit would come eventually. I really am not sure how all that was allocated. It would depend on the number of customers you had registered with you and quite how all that would have worked out I’m not sure. But I think there was a lot of excitement when Spam came over from America [laughs] but yeah. Things were, things were there but in limited supply and I think the lard and the margarine and butter would come in great big square slabs and I can see my grandpa standing there in the shop with a knife and slicing it and then cutting it into what two ounces per person or whatever they were allowed to have and I do remember he was very good. He was always very precise. Years of practice. I don’t know what the cheese allocation was but yeah people survived on the rations. I can’t remember you know us ever feeling terribly hungry in the war but it was all just basic food. Fresh vegetables. We grew potatoes of course in the garden. All the salad stuff and we had fruit trees in the garden at Reynolds Street. Strawberries, raspberries and so you know pretty self-sufficient really and when I got grown up and grandma used to talk she said that as a child I was easy to feed because she said if she said to me, ‘What would you like for your tea, Ann?’ I invariably said beans on toast or pancakes. So, but again it’s what you get used to. Bread and jam of course you would have at teatime and just what you got used to. I can’t ever remember what I had for breakfast. I can’t remember about cereals but obviously I must have had something.
AH: What about on your birthday? Do you remember?
ER: Birthdays. No. I can’t really. I can’t really remember anything about birthdays very much. I’m sure my cousins who were in my age group would have been invited around. I can’t really remember about birthday parties. No. I can’t. I can’t seem [pause] I know Christmas in the war years. On Christmas Eve and after the war years as well but certainly during the war I remember on Christmas Eve we would, but I would have to be a bit older to be up, well not terribly late especially when I was at the Father Christmas stage but I do remember we used to go around to Bill’s mum. Auntie Peg’s. But on Christmas Day in the evening a lot of the family would come to us and certainly that must have been happening in the war years because my cousin Joan she was in the the WAAFs. She was at Binbrook. She was older than me. She was twelve years older than me and she was friendly with an airman out there. I think he was called Eric and Eric must have brought some silver strip like that. Long silver strip paper. What it was used for I don’t know and whether he should have brought it from the camp I don’t know but I remember in the hall my, my parents had got that sort of large V shapes fastened to the, to the wall and after [pause] so the family had been on Christmas day and then apparently the next day my parents suddenly realised that all this strip stuff had gone from the hall. I thought that was strange. When they got round to my auntie’s because we went round there on Boxing Day at some point when they got round to my auntie’s it was on their wall and Joan I think and probably my cousin Bill had taken it down at our house, taken it home and put it up on their their wall [laughs] and it took a while before my parents realised it had gone. So what that was used for in the RAF I don’t know. But yeah. I don’t know what happened to the boyfriend whether he survived the war or not.
AH: Do you know what Joan did in Binbrook?
ER: No. I don’t. It’s funny how you don’t know what these people did exactly but of course I’ve heard a lot of people say that when the men folk came back after the First World War and then the Second World War they didn’t talk about it. So a lot of people don’t know what their fathers did actually do abroad because they just wouldn’t talk about it. Wanted to forget it. So, so no, I don’t know. When Joan came out of the WAAFs I think she went to work, work for Lloyds Bank in Grimsby I think. And then she met Frank. He’d been in the RAF and they got married about 1947. But no, I honestly can’t remember Joan talking about it. And then of course after the war cousin Bill, cousin John another one then of course they went off to do their National Service which, and of course I don’t know when that stopped but right into the 1950s because my husband he did National Service. We were married in ’56 but he’d done National Service and I’ve thought about that quite a bit lately with all these yobboes on the streets who want to go around stabbing and shooting people. I thought it’s a pity there isn’t National Service because as I look back cousin Bill, John, Geoff and other young men who had done National Service all said that whilst it had been a bit of a shock to the system they’d enjoyed it. Looking back they’d enjoyed and I remember one young man, well he was an older man when he was telling me this, he said that he had been sent out to Hong Kong. He said he thinks that he and his parents had to look on the map and see where Hong Kong was exactly. But you see he said he would never have gone out to Hong Kong. Cousin Bill and cousin John they both had spells in Germany and yeah, I don’t think Geoff, my husband, I don’t think he went abroad but I know he said he’d enjoyed his National Service. So —
AH: Do you know what your cousins did in Germany?
ER: No. I don’t. No. I seem to think with cousin Bill it was something mechanical. It could have been something to do with tanks, repairs or something because he was good with cars. Cousin John, he eventually took up teaching and he became a headmaster. I would imagine John it would have been more of a clerical job but he was in the Air Force. He had a spell at Cranwell. I remember that. And Bill was in the Army. Oh, cousin Peter. He went into the Navy like his father had been in the Navy in the war. Peter, when he left school he went into the Navy and had a career in the Navy until he retired. But he died. All the cousins have all gone. I’m the only one left out of lots of cousins apart from my cousin John’s widow and she lives in Beverley and we text each other. I haven’t. Cousin John and Betty came here when I moved here thirty-two years ago. They came twice. They were living at Barton-on-Humber but they had three children and when any of their youngsters were moving house John and Betty were always very involved in putting in new bathrooms, kitchens and decorating. So their visits to me became less. Less frequent. So eventually it was just talking on the telephone. John died about three years ago but Betty and I have kept in touch which is nice. She is around my age and she likes snooker so when snooker is on she’s watching up there in Beverly, I’m watching here and we’re communicating with text messages [laughs] but I’ve never really discussed the war with Betty so I don’t know. She was a Cleethorpes girl so she will have some memories. I’ll try and think on to, when I’m actually talking to her I’ll try to think on to ask her what she can remember. Or what she can remember her parents telling her or what John’s parents might have said. I can’t remember what John’s father did in the war though. I haven’t a clue. But I do remember after the war he worked for, I think it was there was a petrol company National Benzole. I think he worked for them. He was good with cars. Always enjoying. So was Uncle Tom. They were always with cars. They seemed to get more pleasure from taking the engine out as you could in those days and tinkering and putting it back then they ever actually got from going out and driving the car [laughs] The cars were always in bits. But again that’s all after the war —
AH: Were there any evacuees from London? Any children?
ER: Not that I knew of. There must have been. Well, I say there must have been. Whether the Lincolnshire coast area would have been considered safe I don’t know. I can’t remember hearing any children from Cleethorpes being evacuated. Oh yes. Yeah, one family. Yes. He’s died though. The son. A couple of years back. But I do remember him saying, excuse me, that his grandfather had suggested that, I don’t know what his father did in the war but anyway they were in Cleethorpes but his grandfather suggested the family should go over and live with him in the Blackpool area as being safer and they did go. But I don’t know whether they weren’t happy there but I remember Dennis saying that they came back to Cleethorpes but I don’t recall them suffering from bomb damage but I didn’t really know them too well during the war years. So no. So I can’t remember hearing apart from those two girls coming from Germany I can’t remember hearing of anyone who had evacuees or anyone being evacuated. I don’t think my parents would have been happy to have had me evacuated and I probably wouldn’t have wanted to go but then who knows. Maybe I would have just taken it in my stride. So no. We were all young people. We were all at home. I’m trying to think of anything else I can remember. I’m sure it’s the fate of people who you know I’m eighty-eight and there will be people three or four years older than me who will remember a lot more but unfortunately [pause] Oh, I was going to say I don’t know anyone older than me [laughs] but of course there’s Norman Rutherford. He lived around the corner from us. We were in Reynolds Street. His, my grandma knew the Rutherfords and so did Bill’s mum Auntie Peg. Norman Rutherford is, it will be his birthday in a week or two’s time and I think he’ll be ninety-four so he will have some memories. His father was a skipper. Had his own trawler. I must ask Norman. I speak to him fairly regularly. I’ll ask him because if he’s got some really good memories. He came over just a fortnight ago to see me and Ann Burden came as well. Did I tell you about Ann? Yes. So Norman is driving again now because he had to stop.
AH: I’m just going to pause for a minute.
ER: Yes do.
[interview paused]
AH: What did you do after the war?
ER: Well, I went on to the Girl’s Grammar School and I was there until, it would have been 1952 [pause] ’51 ’52 and then I felt my parents were under quite a lot of the pressure at the shop. It was quite a large shop. It was a nice shop and we were very busy and once I got old enough at school at weekends and school holidays I would go and help in the shop. My grandfather wasn’t in very good health. There was my grandma at home. My mother’s mother. Well, my father’s father, Grandpa Sheardown was living with us then and my mother’s mother had stayed with us after the war and I always had the feeling that my parents were under a lot of pressure workwise and they never got a holiday and so eventually I wouldn’t say there was pressure put on me. But eventually I did make the decision that I would go into the shop which I did and it enabled my grandfather to take life easier and it also enabled my mother and father to have a day off together. Looking back I think my parents really never got any private time to themselves. At the house there was always grandma, grandpa, me. At the shop there was grandpa. So it did mean that a Tuesday which was a quieter day at the shop grandpa and I could manage the shop on a Tuesday and my father was very fond of horse racing and it, it meant that he and my mother could go off for the day say if they got, he’d got a car by then, they could go off for the day say up to York or Lincoln if there was a meeting. But they could go off and have a day at the races. So we did that. And then I got married in ’56 and then let me just think. Geoff and I moved to Lincoln in ’60 I think. Anyway, my father, grandpa had died, grandma had died so it left my parents. So anyway, my father he’d had the shop modernised and because otherwise it was you know the old shelving and wooden floor. You know typical grocery shop of that early era and, but he could see the advent of supermarkets. He said that things were going to change rapidly. So he gave up the business and he rented the shop out. So then after a short while they decided that they would leave Cleethorpes and go and live in the country and they went to North Somercotes to live. My father chose that village because it had got a doctors’ and some shops and a dental practice. So if, and they’d also got a bus route if he, well they, couldn’t drive. They both could drive. So they went there to live and then of course I was moving around with Geoff until my children got old enough and then I got the job in the Art Gallery and the Pump Room Museum in Harrogate and Knaresborough Castle and Museum which I absolutely loved. Yeah. It was good. Yes. So, so I had I think I had about ten years working there and then Geoff and I separated and I sold the house. He said that I could have the house so I sold the house and came back to Lincolnshire to live. Here I am thirty-two years later. So, so that’s it. Not a terribly exciting life really but a nice life I feel. I mean although the marriage broke up it didn’t distress me unduly because for a long time we’d been going our separate ways and so when Geoff told me, is that still on by the way? [laughs] Oh.
AH: Sorry —
ER: Pardon?
AH: I just wanted to check what the shop was called.
ER: Pardon?
AH: Your shop. What was it called?
ER: Oh, Sheardown’s. Yes. Yes. Quite a long time ago because eventually my mother did sell it when my father had died and a hairdresser has it now which I’ve never been in because it’s a big shop for an upstairs as well. So it’s a big place for a hairdressing salon unless they’ve made living accommodation above but sometimes I think if I ring well I don’t go to Cleethorpes very often but I’ve thought sometimes I would quite like to see it. But when they had it decorated some years back it was apparently in the Grimsby Evening Telegraph that when they’d taken some white paint off the front above the big shop windows there was the writing, “Sheardown and Sons.” Yes. So I guess that’s got painted over but it is still there. Yes. So, yeah. So —
AH: Well, thank you very much.
ER: Perhaps you could eliminate the bit I was saying —