Island Life Magazine Ltd December 2008/January 2009 | Page 47

THE ISLAND AT WAR 1939 - 1945
children from the National
School opposite, appeared
throughout the Island. The
cost of the shelters had to
be covered by the council,
not the government, and if
a householder’s income was
less than £250 per annum,
they could have a free
corrugated-iron Anderson
shelter in the back garden.
‘Public Shelter’ notices were
pasted on town halls, railway
stations, offices and shops.
When the air-raid siren
sounded everyone had to go
immediately to a shelter and
stay there until the All Clear
sounded. A Newport girl
living in Whitepit Lane and
signing her name ‘Bubbles’,
wrote to her pen pal in Canada

life

on 15 October 1940, “200 air
raids today, air raid shelters
all over the town, guns,
searchlights.”
Concrete pill boxes, with
a brick wall to protect the
entrance, appeared at the
junction of Castle, Trafalgar
and Carisbrooke Roads.
Nigel Harris, who was aged
thirteen in 1939 and lived
in Gunville remembers, “At
first, it was like being in an
another world.” Nigel was
the ‘doughnut boy’ at Harvey’s
bakehouse in Lugley Street,
working for 2/6d. a week in
the morning before he went
to school. He and his friends
used to see the fighter planes
flying low over the town,
waggling their wings or doing

Christine and Peter Ferguson's wedding, 10 February 1945

Patricia Key and Petty Officer Ronald Calverley at Holy Trinity
Church, Ryde

a complete roll. “We would
argue whether they were Spits
or Hurricanes” Nigel says.
The winter of 1939-40 was
the coldest for forty-five
years and in the February the
clocks went forward an hour
and summer time was kept
all year round. Then in May
1941 double summer time was
introduced for the next few
years, the idea being that the
long daylight hours would help
to reduce traffic accidents,
along with petrol rationing
which was introduced in
September to cut down the
number of cars on the roads.
Pre-war the words, “Thrift
radiates happiness”, were
emblazoned on a wall of a
Victorian bank in Birmingham
but it’s doubtful whether
Britain’s citizens felt the same
way when they were forced to
cope with food and clothes

The Island's new funky radio station www.wightfm.com

rationing. But it seems that on
the Isle of Wight for the first
year in the war a shortage of
food was unheard of according
to a report by a Daily Mail
journalist in April 1943.
The headline ran, "Front-line
Isle Flowing with Plenty” with
the reporter going on to say he
found the windows of the cake
shops full of mouth-watering
items like big fruit cakes,
Chelsea buns, cream buns
and cakes with real chocolate
on top. The butchers sold
prime Isle of Wight lamb and
displayed notices with the
words, “We have plenty of
meat for emergency coupons.”
A Food Control official told
the reporter that the shops
had expected a further six
weeks holiday trade when war
broke out, instead they were
left with large stocks and no
holidaymakers. “Bakers and

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