The Day the War Ended by Jacky Hyams

Author:Jacky Hyams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Blake

‘PORK SALAD AND A CAKE WITH REAL ICING, FOOD YOU HADN’T SEEN FOR YEARS’

Ivy Gardiner (1924–2019) was a munitions worker in World War II on the Wirral, near Liverpool, living through the devastating Liverpool Blitz of 1940–1.

Ivy lived in the Wirral area for her entire life. In 2012 she was awarded an MBE for her long-term dedication to the Brownie movement.

I turned twenty-one not long after D-Day. We knew that was the real turning point. I’ll never forget my birthday gift from my mother: just one tiny chocolate éclair. She had stood in a queue for an hour to buy it.

I’d been courting my boyfriend, Wilf, since war broke out. Wilf was from an Army family, but his brothers all went into the Navy. Wilf wound up in a reserved job because he had a hearing problem, so he was a fitter and turner for the Navy – eventually he was making rum barrels for the Navy in Birkenhead.

We’d go to the pictures whenever we could. One unforgettable night was the time Wilf and I were sitting watching a film in the Ritz Cinema, Birkenhead. It was December 1940 and the sirens went off.

I jumped up immediately: ‘I’m going, Wilf!’

He was a bit unsure, wanting to watch the rest of the film. But common sense told him to come out after me. As we walked along the road you could see the planes above, getting ready to drop their bombs. And they did come down, straight onto the roof of the Ritz, killing ten people and injuring a hundred – exactly where we’d been sitting.

Of course we were all desperate for it to be over and for us to win the war. The propaganda was wonderful: ‘Be like Dad, Keep Mum’ they told us. Nobody ever thought we would lose.

New Year 1945 and my munitions work stopped. Then I went back to normal factory work. Just after VE Day on 25 May, Wilf and I had our wedding.

But it was hardship. Spam salad for a wedding reception. My mum and Wilf’s mum got together, as you couldn’t get things like icing easily. So Mum swapped all her coupons to get all her friends to look out for icing.

In the end I had a three-tier cake. With real icing. And all the swapping meant we got a quarter of a pig. It was wonderful. Pork salad and a big cake with real icing. You hadn’t seen things like that for ages.

All my friends got married in borrowed white dresses. In the end I bought a blue silk coat in Liverpool and a hat with ostrich feather and veiling. As a wedding present, my mother managed to buy us a ticket to fly to the Isle of Man. I think it would have been one of the first planes to leave Liverpool airport after the war. When you looked out of the window you could see all the guns along Liverpool Bay, a reminder of all we’d gone through.

Wilf and I were virgins when we married; neither of us had a clue what to do.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.