Free A Child's War by Mike Brown Page B

measured without boots or shoes, jackets, waistcoats, and 2.5 pounds must be deducted to allow for weight of other clothing. One thing never in short supply was bureaucracy, or ‘bumf’ (bum fodder – toilet paper).
M AKE D O AND M END
    To make the most of their existing clothes, the government encouraged people to ‘make do and mend’ (this meant patching and mending existing clothes) and to ‘sew and save’ (altering old clothes to make new ones). To this end the Board of Trade introduced the character of ‘Mrs Sew and Sew’: she was used in a series of advertisements to show how to ‘turn two old dresses into a new one’, and so on. There were meetings run by the Women’s Institute or the WVS to give demonstrations and advice.
    Not all the advice was particularly helpful. The Ministry of Information booklet ‘Make Do and Mend’, published in 1943, contains the following: ‘Cutting-Down for the Children – Plus-fours will make two pairs of shorts for a school-boy. An old skirt will make one pair of knickers and a little play-skirt for a seven year old.’, and, most baffling of all, ‘Woollen stockings with worn feet can have the legs opened down the back seams and can then be made up into an infant’s jersey. Bind it with ribbon at neck, sleeves and hem.’
    If you were prepared to pay there was always the ‘Black Market’, which meant buying things illegally. But the goods were not always what they seemed. Vivien Hatton: ‘Once we went to a market near Ludgate Circus, there were some wide-boys selling nylons without coupons. They were very expensive, ten shillings, I think, but we thought we’d got a bargain. When we got home and opened the boxes we found they had seams at the front – we’d been sold rejects!’

EIGHT
Doing Their Bit
    Everyone was urged to do as much as they could towards the war effort – this was known as ‘doing your bit’. Children were encouraged to become involved in war service from an early age. With younger children this mainly took the form of salvage – collecting waste products for re-use; today we would call this recycling.
    Scrap materials collected included wastepaper, metal, bones, tinfoil, rubber, rags, bottles and jam-jars, as well as waste food and acorns for pig swill. Other collections included magazines and books for the forces, clothes for refugees and air-raid victims, and herbs, seaweed, horse-chestnuts, rose hips and nettles for use in making medicines.
    The government did its best to involve children in as many ways as possible. The following leaflet was issued in 1941 by the Ministry of Information. It sets out some of the many ways in which they could ‘do their bit’.
    This leaflet specially concerns those between 14 and 18 years of age
    YOU CAN HELP YOUR COUNTRY
    THE DIFFERENCE between this war and previous wars is that now we are all in the front line in a struggle for the principles of freedom and justice and respect for the laws of God and honour amongst men. Whether we are in uniform or not, we are in the war. And no matter how young we are or how old we are there are jobs we can do for our country. This particular leaflet contains some suggestions for those who are between 14 and 18 years of age.
    LOOK THROUGH this list of jobs to be done. Tick off any which you are already doing – and you’ll probably be surprised to find how many there still are for you to tackle. Make up your mind which of them you would like to do or are able to do, and then get on with as many useful jobs as you can.
    KNOW YOUR WAY ABOUT
    If you’re going to be handy in an emergency you should get to know everything about the district where you live. Where exactly are the Air Raid Shelters, the First Aid Posts, the Fire Stations, the Telephone Boxes, the Police Stations, the Footpaths and the Short Cuts? If you know where they are you may be able to save someone a few precious moments in an air raid. It is particularly important to know short cuts and footpaths.