Tales of a War Long Ago – A Little Boy’s Memories of World War II

Ba ba black sheep you got some wool,

Yes sir, no sir, three bags full.

one for my master and one for my lady,

and one for the little boy who lives down the street.

The boy lived down the street in one of the cottages on the farm.
The cabins had no electricity as the cables were thought to be unattractive. The boy no longer lives there; he fell into the pond and drowned. The pond no longer exists; was refilled.

Choo was not that little boy. However, he has no wool, he has ration instead.
But Choo is lucky. He has an older brother, so he keeps all of his brother’s old clothes. He is very proud to have a blazer and a hat. He likes uniforms.

He adores his older brother. When he was a baby, his brother strapped her Victoria Perambulator to his bike and pretended it was a horse and cart and rode it through the streets. The neighbors did not approve. His brother wasn’t going to have a queer for his younger brother either; so her baby curls came out.

Now he teaches Choo how to get on the roof of the farm. It is really a stately home with a large arch that divides it in two through which a horse-drawn carriage can pass. There’s an old coach on a field and Choo and his friends are playing on it. They go up on the roof at night because it is not allowed.
Podge, your sister came up during the day because she’s not allowed out at night. She is also not allowed to play with her siblings when they are having adventures. One day she saw a ladder left by a workman and climbed up it. She sat at the top of the arch waving to people. She was not afraid. Small children are not afraid to climb. They just don’t know how to get off. Choo’s older brother had to climb on her and rescue her because there were no men. Instead, there was a war.

Choo’s brother is a boarding school in high school. He went there when he was six years old. It is very sad for Choo when he returns to his school after the holidays. He crawls to the foot of the bed and cries. His dog Kim climbs on his bed and cries with him. Small children are allowed to cry if no one sees them and Kim won’t tell because he is a very loyal dog.

Mairzy Doats and Dozy Doats and Liddle Lamzy Divey

A childish dive, right?

Yes! Mairzy Doats and Dozy Doats and Little Lamzy Divey

A child immersion too, right?

The boy was learning to become a knight. He received proper riding lessons to learn how to have a good seat and keep his back straight. He also went to school but had trouble with letters and always put the S backwards.

Because there was a war, there was no beef or pork, so he had to live off the land. He was lucky that he lived in the land of milk and honey. He didn’t like milk but he loved honey. Very thick yellowish brown honey with white on top. The honey combs were beautiful and he was not afraid of the bees in their hives. The fruit of the land was delicious. Apples and pears and cherries and plums from the orchard, and strawberries and blackberries when he walked the roads. Even the vegetables were delicious. The hot buttered asparagus (cholesterol hadn’t been invented then) and the peas he and his sister used to pull out. It was his job to look for the eggs. The chickens would put them in all sorts of funny places and he would put them in a container of water to see if they would sink or float. The eggs were wrapped in newspaper to preserve them. Much of the fruit was cooked and bottled by his mother. The salt came in big blocks like a loaf of bread.

Maybe there wasn’t much meat in the butcher shop but there was pheasant and the hills were full of rabbits. Kim the dog loved to chase rabbits. One day his mother, talking to a friend, remembered that there were half a dozen skinless rabbits on the kitchen table. Since she didn’t want her little darling to be surprised to see her death, she hurried to the kitchen. She found Choo calmly petting the rabbits and saying “lovely din din, lovely din din”. He was a very pragmatic young man.
However, he was a good soldier and, like his countrymen, he knew his duty and suffered alongside them by taking his daily dose of cod liver oil.

He also ate other things. Once, while on vacation in Tintagel, his mother, seeing Choo sleeping at night, found him foaming at the mouth. She shook him by the ankles and a halfpenny came out. The doctor said that she had been in her stomach for six months. She hadn’t heard of Adam either and ate the poisonous red berries she had been told he shouldn’t eat. His mother gave him pints of salt water to throw up. She should have put him in the car instead of her. When she put him in the car to take him to some important place (there was not much gas, she was also rationed) he was always sick with his best clothes.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

Humpty dumpty had a big fall

all the horse kings and all the man kings

I couldn’t get Humpty back together.

Choo was already marked, but not yet by the war. He had fallen down the stairs and a tooth had pierced his lips. He had fallen off his pony and put a big hole in his knee. The blood was everywhere. His older brother kept asking if he was going to die.

He had already been under the surgeon’s knife. He and his sister had both had their tonsils removed. On the kitchen table where they also removed the entrails from the pheasants and rabbits. He remembers the surgeon with something that looked like his mother’s tea strainer with some muslin on top of it and a few drops of liquid (ether) put in it. Perhaps the doctor had forgotten something and her mother had lent him her tea strainer.

Then disaster struck. Scarlet fever. The farm was quarantined by the town. No one came except the doctor. Even faithful Lily abandoned her post. Choo was sick, then his mother got sick too, but Podge didn’t. Her mother dragged a mattress on her hands and knees into the kitchen and the three of them lived there to keep warm. Choo can’t remember much. Snapshot-like images with blackened edges as if bursting into flames. They both recovered.

Then disaster struck again. How long after that Choo can’t remember. Choo’s mother was taken to the hospital. She had a rare blood type and they had taken too much blood for the war effort and when she herself got sick there was no more to give back. The doctors gave up. Choo’s mother gave up. Everyone was waiting for the end. Choo’s father was called home. He was a civil engineer and was building airfields and submarine pens for the war.

Choo’s father went to the hospital, saw his wife and said, “What are you doing there, woman? The children need you. Get up and go home.” He was a tough man. But Choo’s mother was a tough woman, and she decided right then and there to stop feeling sorry for herself and get better.
He lived to be ninety-three years and ten months.

Aside from mumps and whooping cough etc. the worst was over and Choo soon forgot the crisis and went back to wandering the hills or riding his pony.

When Johnny comes marching home again,

Hooray, hooray,

Then we will give you a warm welcome,

Hooray, hooray!

The band played in the village street and the family learned that the war was over, at least in Europe. Japan was very far away and the concept of it as a place was difficult for Choo to understand.

His mother decided to bake a victory cake. The problem was finding something to color the blue of the red, white, and blue icing. She debated using part of one of those blue buckets that went into washing clothes. She was on the list of banned substances that Choo couldn’t put in his mouth. Choo had a great experience with banned substances. He was afraid that his mother would destroy the family on victory day.

Only one house had been destroyed and its occupants killed. It was a long way out of town hidden in a secluded copse; it was not known how it had been bombed.

It was decided to change houses. To go to a place called Surrey. They would take Kim the dog, of course. They would also take the chickens and roosters because rationing awaited them. The life expectancy of the rooster was not thought to be great. There would be neighbors who lived on the garden fence and not on the hills and far away where the wise neighbors lived. There would be something called friction. They would leave Choo and Podge behind. Choo would become a little boy with a proper name and we will now call him little boy instead of little boy. Podge was getting pretty and her pretty sisters were a social asset, but they needed a proper name for her, so although she still had her pretty name for everyone, her brothers decided to call her Jane Ayre. But that was her own private name. The young man didn’t know where she came from but he felt that she sounded superior. The older brother would leave the preparatory school where he had won the Victor Laudorum and become a cadet. He would have a beautiful new navy blue uniform with big gold buttons. The boy would go to a new school and get his own new uniform.