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ETHEL CAUSLEY

I didn't get involved much in the War, we were living at Okehampton, no, I was at Seaton when the War broke out.

How old were you?

Oh, 20,.. I was 26 when David was born, and he was five months old when the War broke out. So I was about 25 by the time we left Seaton.... we were there seven years.... my husband was on the railway, you see, so we travelled around from place to place. Luckily he wasn't a soldier because he was in a reserved occupation. So he was on the railway, so he was tied to his work. But I entertained friends. There was a lady and her husband, they had two daughters. We all got friendly, and this daughter used to (she was only about 15/16 I expect) she used to got to dancing classes in London, and they came down to Okehampton. Well, that was a dull place for them. But, any rate, she used to do the splits and dancing and all that. Well anyway, to entertain troops, Mrs Walters said "Why don't we get up a concert for them". So I said "I can't sing!", but she said "we need some dresses and clothes". So they all used to come to me at night and we used to have a sewing party: we used to make all the clothes, really pretty too, some of it. Because there was only odds and end of material we had, because it was coupons, you had to give up your coupons, we couldn't afford to give that up. But I used to do dressmaking and people used to say, if they had any material over, "well I don't want it, Mrs Causley, you can have it." I'd say, 鈥渙h, thank you very much鈥�. Well, they said "you can make something for the children". We did all sorts, we made some lovely clothes. Mrs Walters used to come and would help do the sewing, you know. Then, of course, they used to stay for supper at night, and I used to make pasties and all sorts of things, because it was rationed. The biggest hurt was the tea bags, because you only had two ounces each (laughs). My husband only had two ounces, he didn't have anything extra at work, but he was lucky. I think they had a restaurant at work, the station, and also the soldiers had an office at the station and he was station foreman there. Quite a sticky job really, because the trains used to get so late, coming down from London, because if there was any sirens, for air raids, the trains couldn't run, you see. And the last train from London used to be six o'clock in those days, but they used to get down to Okehampton at ten. But my husband would be working until perhaps three or four o'clock in the morning - the trains would be all those hours late. They couldn't start until the all-clear.

But we used to do all the sewing. The troops, they used to enjoy these concerts, that we used to get up, you know. As regards anything else, I never got involved, because, of course, I had David and he was only a baby.

How did you manage with rationing?

This was the trouble! (laughs)

Food rationing.

That's right. We all had our ration books and we used to put one ration book in one shop and the other one in the other. David would have a green book because he was only a baby. So I don't think he had any tea ration. We had lots of farmers around and they used to get extra rations, for harvesting and everything. They often used to say "here you are, you can have a little bit of tea" and I used to make the tea every night, but sometimes they would bring a little bit of tea for the extra one.

My mother used to say, if you save the tea in the teapot, put it in a jug and then you can warm it again, instead of throwing it away. Oh, yes we had to do all that. And we used to save any old tea, and put a little drop more water in the pot. I like my cup of tea, they all know that here! But the butchers were quite good, you could always get sausages off of ration. We used to make sausage rolls, to go with cups of tea when they were all doing the sewing, you know. We used to have a lovely time, really. But they all went back to London after the War, and we went to Hatherleigh.

Well, that is a real country..... a big market place. And all the farmers around, they always had plenty of their own pork, killed their pigs and everything, and we used to have a lovely piece of pork and some nice rashers of bacon, get a nice lot of fat.... oh, that's another thing we used do: to make some fat for cooking chips, we used to buy marrow bones and stew them and stew them down, and we used to make lovely soup with the bones; and we used to let it get cold and skim the tops, and we used to get some lovely fat. People used to ask "how can you do chips because we haven't got an ounce of lard?" I said I make my own - my mother told us what to do, to use the marrow bones. I used to say (to the butcher) can I have some marrow bones this week - under the counter - I used to say "I only want it for the fat, for cooking chips and different things for all these people that come sewing with me at night, to get these concerts up". They used to do a lot for this town. The girl who did the splits, she always used to do Dick Whittington, and oh, we used to make the clothes lovely, it was all made out of pieces of old material and that.

Was that at Seaton?

No. that was at Okehampton. We'd left Seaton.

And did you see many troops there?

Oh, there was too many troops, we had three lots of camps. There was a Polish camp, an American camp and our own up on Dartmoor. Heaps and heaps of troops there.

How did you get on with the troops?

Never met any of them, but some of the other people did. There was one young lady, they lived next door to us, and her husband and the father, he had to go back into the Navy, he was on Reserve, I expect.

And when we went to Okehampton, that was a strange place for me. My husband was used to travelling around, but I wasn't. This girl, she and her mother they used to go out at night, down to the pubs. I was always at home with David, my husband was always at work. But I wouldn't have gone to the pubs. Never been in one in my life!

No, but I thought "Oh my golly鈥� She was having this baby, and she was so drunk one night, that when she came home she was ill, and in the middle of the night we were woke up to say "Mrs Causley, can you come. Rita's had her baby. I said "What do you mean!" Lady next door on the opposite side, we both rushed in. My husband, he had to get up and go and look for the nurse, because they had no men in their house, you see. But I said "I can't leave David on his own". I think Betty, her daughter, she went and sat with David while my husband went and looked for the nurse. Then he went to the wrong place because of the blackout. Rita had to go to a hospital but they wouldn't take the baby then because all the troops were in the hospital.

Okehampton Hospital was full, Exeter Hospital would have kept the baby, but because the baby was born at home鈥his old lady said "Oh I can have the baby". So, of course, I said "let the baby come in with us", so we had the baby for six weeks until she came out of hospital. It was a lovely baby, but girl, she had nothing ready for that baby, I had to find all my baby clothes that I'd kept, and put on to Michael. When she came home from the hospital, she never bothered to even come and see the baby. I said to Betty, that was the little sister, "You must take the baby in, it's not fair on my husband to be up at night with the baby." After that, that was the time when we started the sewing, to entertain the troops. And we had one ration book in one shop, and one ration book in the other. One was in the Co-op, because we'd always dealt with the Co-op, but other one was a young lady two doors down from us, and she said "If you put one of your books in with us, sometimes there's a little extra, like biscuits." You couldn't get biscuits, sometimes the girls would say when we went in the shop: "I've got something under the counter for you, David" and it would be a banana, perhaps, because you couldn't get bananas, or anything. Orange juice, well we could get that on David's book, you went to the Food Office. Oh yes, that's where I met the Walters, because the two daughters were working in the Food Office; that's how we all got friendly in the beginning, going to get the orange juice, you see. And I think we could only get one of those bottles in two months or something, I can't remember. But it was quite nice really. And then going back to the clothes coupons, I turned heaps of peoples' coats inside out and re-made them and they would come up lovely. I put hours and hours into it and my husband used to say "You're going to wear your eyes out, my dear". I don't think it was anything to do with that really, I was always sewing. Now I've got to just sit here and can't do anything, because I can't see. Because I've got this macular degeneration, blindness. Not the ordinary blindness.

But oh, the cooking I've done for all these folks that come in while they've all done the sewing...! David, when he was only about two or three at the time, and I'd get him to bed, then over would come the Walters's. He used to shout down the stairs "Aunty Lily, Aunty Lily, you come and hear me say my prayers" She used to sit on the stairs, and I used to say "Don't you go up because he'll never get to sleep and we've got to get on with the sewing" And we could stay up quite late, because my husband was at work, and we'd have to get his meal when he came home, two or three o'clock in the morning.

What time did he start work?

Eight o'clock in the morning. Hours and hours they had to put in at that station.

He didn't have to do Home Guard duties, then?

Oh, they had Home Guard, that was funny. When we were at Seaton, that's right, my husband was the head of the Home Guard there. We used to laugh. One night the sirens went, and David said "It's no good, I must go on duty", so off he went to the station and he couldn't get in. He came back for his keys and he said "There's nobody at the station, the Home Guard was all locked in". They thought there was something happening and they all kept out of the way. They'd locked the station up! (laughs) He went back and said "Talk about Home Guard, you're no good!" I don't think they were much. David belonged to the Home Guard in Okehampton but he had to stay at the station.

We had to leave Seaton: they commandeered our houses, right on the seafront. They brought all these sandbags because........ I think they may have tried to invade, although it never got to anything. That's how we got to go to Okehampton, because my husband said "We're not safe here." So he put in for this job at Okehampton and he got it. We were quite safe there really. The first night we went to Okehampton I said "well, this is no better than Seaton" because the sirens went and there were some bombs dropped. But what they were trying to do was destroy a big viaduct each side of Okehampton, where the trains go over; and they were trying to wreck all those viaducts. If they had, nothing could have moved. The traffic had to be kept going, no matter how long you had to stay. I think he got overtime for it, but it wasn't funny, really, all those hours. Because there were no real men on the station, because the younger one were taken and there were only boys leaving school. My husband had to do all sorts he wouldn't normally have, but he said you couldn't trust boys. They had one lady porter and the other young lady, she was in the office. That's how it started with women working. Quite a lot of them were in the Land Army, but we were exempt because of the children.

And he still had to do Home Guard duties on top of working all those hours?

Yes, The Home Guard was at the station: Okehampton was always open, but he never used to get home until 4 o'clock some nights, and that went on a long, long time. The first time the bombs did drop - we were in rooms there because you couldn't get a house for love nor money, the railway houses had been commandeered for evacuees, so we had to wait until one of the engine drivers went back to Exmouth Junction, and he told me to go to Blatchfords, because railway people could get houses quicker: they knew they'd get their money, and that's how we got this cottage down by the castle. It was ever so pretty down there. That night (when the bombs dropped) it was ever so late, and people were running about in the streets. They said that the station had been bombed, and he had to walk down to the viaduct and back to check the bombs hadn't dropped, but they were quite a way away. they didn't get that very good.

So he had quite a responsible job.

Yes, all through the War. From then (Okehampton) he went as Station Master at Hatherleigh.

Was that after the War?

Yes, but rationing hadn't finished. Rationing didn't end for a long time. I'll tell you what I made butter out of: My mother used to say "get all your milk, boil it very, very slow, let it stand until the cream came to the top" then she showed us the way to make butter. We used to skim that off, so we were drinking skimmed milk in those days, but eating the butter. It used to make lovely butter. That helped us with our two ounces of rationed butter. We were lucky, we had two milkmen. One used to go up in the fields and milk his cows, and when I think now what (processes) the milk has to go through. Nobody had any tummy troubles in those days! Mr Jordan used to come round and dip it out of his pail, and Mr Loxton used to come round and we'd get another pint from him. Now I'm on a diet of skimmed milk and margarine! We used to make our own dripping, and the gravy was nice too. It was worse after the War, when you thought you were being able to get things, than before.

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