VE day - only one lifetime away. Family memories of WW2 and the celebration of graft, communities, digging and a hoped for future!

2025 and services and celebrations are being held to commemorate 80 years of Victory in Europe. Churchill announced the victory on May 8th 1945. Much cause for celebration at home but others such as my father were still in Burma and the far east.

My mother’s parents however had been in England for the duration of the war - my grandfather, a maths teacher, was at first evacuated in one direction and my mother who had started school that September was evacuated with her mother and baby brother into north wales.

Just prior to WW2 they had bought a new house in an estate near Birkenhead. Being away meant dealing with frozen pipes at a distance. No car but public transport, a bicycle and of course shank’s pony (legs). Not too long into the war they were able to return so in 1940 and onwards were back home.

My grandfather took over a new allotment which was created as part of the war effort in a local park. I remember visiting it in my childhood - he was still cultivating it until the allotments were shut down in 1970 and returned to parkland.

My mother told me stories of potatoes chitting on a large chest in her bedroom, how the back garden was also dug over, of the Anderson shelter they had at the back of the outhouse and the air-raids. My grandfather wrote ‘Had shelter built privately and children to bed there each evening. Sometimes in own beds after ‘All Clear’. Night full of aircraft drones, often interrupted by a 5.6lb heavy gun at Brimstage, sufficient to make everthing shake. Myself often out at Home Guard. Very little sleep but did not seem to notice. And so it went on!’ At one point bombs dropped by retreating aircraft damaged the local war memorial - my grandfather found bits in his allotment - several streets away.

Meanwhile my grandfather taught both daytime and a couple of evenings a week as well as being an air raid warden. His memories include a night when he heard bombs in the direction of their home and when he got home the windows were out. Fortunately my mother and brother were staying with friends near Oswestry at the time. I think there were also stories of a bomb crater a little further down their road.

Life was busy in their fight for survival, but community was strong. Helping the local farmer with pigs and the harvest - which gained them some eggs. 

Talking with one of my sons who is interested in food history we were discussing food preservation - with limited supplies of sugar. Much was dried or canned or bottled in brine or it’s own juice. Root vegetables were stored in sand and apples wrapped in newspaper.

Although I’ve got some jottings from my grandmother I could find very little on how my grandfather managed his plot and garden. In researching I found the ‘Dig for Victory’ site where the advice that was given at the time was available and particularly aimed at new gardeners who were using their gardens, allotments and some local parks and estates that were taken over for vegetable production. It makes interesting reading. 

Another family link is to my grandmothers side of the family who used to run a seed merchants in Birkenhead. This would be pre WW1. It’s interesting to see how limited their vegetable varieties were compared to now and probably remained so to the general public during WW2.

Apparently though vegetables were scarce they supplied all their own needs. I am not sure if that also included my grandmother's elderly parents or not but it is quite likely, as she supported them in many other ways. Not going to a greengrocer meant they missed out on the occasional tomato or orange or other available goods.. 

Contributions on the home front were also from the Women's Land Army. This had been set up in WW1 as a way of being self-sufficient and not relying on foreign imports. This was re-instated in WW2 at first on a voluntary and then on a conscription basis. Much of our wheat and other foods were imported from America and other parts of the British empire. Women were taught to plough, do dairy and other farmwork or forestry.

Now we are encouraging gardeners to provide for bees and butterflies - a different type of fighting for our survival. I do wonder how we would cope if we experienced the difficulties my parent’s and grandparents endured. It is so easy to forget how fragile freedom is and what it costs to communities and individuals to maintain it.