“That’s How it Was” | Introduction | Wychwood Women : The Interviewees | Declaration of War | The Arrival of Evacuees| School Time | Preparing for War at Home | Soldiers and Airmen | For the Common Cause | Dr Scott and the Canteen | Domestic Life | We Were Lucky Out Here: Food Rationing | Work for Women Outside the Home | The Effects of War
… from the Wychwoods “That’s How It Was” Publication
‘Declaration of War? I recall it very plainly. I was in the garden, and the window of the sitting room was open and I remember that when Chamberlain said that we were at war I looked through the window and said ‘Oh good. Do you think that it will last long enough for me to get into the Air Force? ‘ My mother, with tears rolling down her cheeks said, ‘ Dorothy, do you know what war means?’ I can still hear her saying that. She had lived through the First World War’. Dorothy Harrison
War was declared on 3 September 1939. Several of our interviewees vividly recalled that hot and sunny day.
‘I was in church, we had come down with the school to Shipton Church, and I fainted. They brought me out and sat me on a seat in the vicarage garden and my teacher came out with me and they said war had been declared. So I remember that very well, sitting on a seat in the vicarage garden’. Mary Barnes
‘I remember the day war was declared. I took the two evacuees to church and during the service the radio was put through and it was announced at eleven o’clock. We came home to a roast beef lunch and our evacuees said that they could not eat it has they always had bread and jam, but, obviously, what they had heard in church must have upset them’. Cicely Miller
‘I’d just taken Janet to church and we’d got home and we heard the sirens, so needless to say we dithered because we didn’t know what to do and then we went outside to see if we could see any planes anywhere’. Betty Scott
Even before the declaration of war, evacuees had arrived in the Wychwoods on the 1st September from London, and for some years preparations had been made in anticipation of a coming war. Every one talked about Hitler and the possibility of war.
‘Oh yes, because everyone was talking about it quite a lot. What he was going to do and what he wasn’t going to do and of course he never did what he was going to do and it went from there, didn’t it, when he invaded Poland and the war started’. Rose Burson
‘We all thought Hitler was awful, such a cruel man and we were just sort of waiting for something to happen, and also of course I remember Neville Chamberlain coming back with his piece of paper saying ‘Peace in our time’ and breathed a sigh of relief but unfortunately it didn’t succeed that way‘. Betty Scott
“That’s How It Was” Menu
These pages are reproduced from the Society’s publication “That’s How It Was”, featuring women in the Wychwoods during World War Two. The texts and images were published in the year 2000, and deserve a place in our expanding online archive. Please bear in mind as you read our texts in these pages, that we reproduce them as published in the year of publication.
Select from:
“That’s How it Was” | Introduction | Wychwood Women : The Interviewees | Declaration of War | The Arrival of Evacuees| School Time | Preparing for War at Home | Soldiers and Airmen | For the Common Cause | Dr Scott and the Canteen | Domestic Life | We Were Lucky Out Here: Food Rationing | Work for Women Outside the Home | The Effects of War
