"On
The Ration"
The UK is an Island, heavily
populated, certainly the heaviest population per square mile in Europe.
The climate has definite seasons and there is only one harvest each
year. Because the climate can be cold at times many foods cannot be
grown.
In the years of WW2 there was no
domestic refrigeration, so many foods could not be stored, for use out of
season. Refrigeration? there was no point at this time as I lived in
a house that had not even got electricity. No sewage connection. No
gas. No hot water system and therefore no
bathroom.
The population depended on imports before
the war to feed the people. Now we had a problem. The famous U Boat
was put to work ensuring that the UK was blockaded from the sea. These
submarines were very successful and were manned with very professional Captains
most of which were not Nazis.
This Naval underwater blockade was very
sucessful. Any lone merchant ship heading towards the UK was sunk.
Many thousands of merchant seaman were killed just trying to bring basic foods
into UK waters. To counteract this we developed the convoy system with
smaller warships (Destroyers & Frigates) as the convoy escort.
For a convoy to be sucessful it has to
travel at the speed of the slowest ship which often put them in the U boat
firing line for longer. But overall the losses were reduced using this
tactic. Our destroyers were good at destroying U boats, but not until at
least two merchant ships had been sunk. The convoy system proved safety in
numbers.
For the first time air power was used against submarines.
But the range of these aircraft was limited & even after the Americans
entered the war there was always to be a middle part of the Atlantic Ocean that
was not covered by air.
Life on a U boat was grim. These
submariners had our respect and in the main their lives were short. We had
some luck here, as we captured a submarine intact and with it the Enigma
machine. (I notice the latest Hollywood production
distorts the history of this event) This was in effect a mechanical
computer that was used to send and receive coded radio messages to and from
Germany.
With their code machine we were able to
decipher their messages. Alter convoy routes and position warships accordingly.
Many U boat Captains went to their death wondering how the hell we knew he was
there.
We also developed ASDIC. Underwater
sound waves for the detection of submarines. Now we call this Sonar and
today it is far more sophisticated. Radar was in it's infancy but used
extensively.
The U boat campaign was successful in so
much that people on the UK mainland did not have sufficient to eat. A
system of rationing was introduced and very soon everything including clothing
was "On The Ration" The rationing system ensured
that the wealthy could not simply buy up all the stocks. It ensured that shop
keepers could not profiteer and it ensured that every man woman & child
could get enough calories each week to live on.
I do believe that many people actually went
hungry, and the diet was plain and monotonous. Of course there was always
a "Black Market" where the wealthy could obtain more if they paid the higher
prices. But the working man had his moments too.
I lived with my grandfather in a rural
village. My grandfather had fought in WW1 and had served in the Royal Navy
between the wars. He now worked in the local coal mine and as this was a
reserved occupation was not required to become a serviceman.
When the local farmers pig gave birth, one
piglet was removed before the government farm inspector came to register the
number of pigs born. From this moment on, those registered pigs were part
of the rationing system and their development would be carefully monitored by
the farm inspectors until they were slaughtered and entered our food
chain.
My grandfather formed an alliance with
three other old men in the village & this unregistered piglet belonged to
this alliance of four older men. This piglet could never be returned to the
farm as it would be noticed by the random visits of the inspector.
So the 4 owners of this illegal piglet took
turns at looking after this ever-growing pig. It would be moved from one
location after another, undercover of darkness in a wheelbarrow. This was a
very funny sight to see as old men behaved like schoolboys playing this illegal
game trying to stay one step ahead of the farming inspectors. If they got
caught they would lose the pig & be fined 5 shillings
But in this case they were never caught.
The pig now fully grown was slaughtered and the carcass cut into 4. A
portion each for the owners. Now for a few weeks we could eat like
kings.
Most basic food stuffs were in short
supply. But no one counted the wild Rabbits & as a very young boy I
became adept at catching these. Rabbit was a stable meat course in my house, and
just occasionally a chicken got killed on the road. So we could eat well again.
Of course the chicken could not have been
killed on the road as the only mechanised transport that came up my lane was
the truck delivering coal. So that poor driver got the blame for the
dead chicken. The coal truck driver got a share of the chicken for
reporting its premature demise to the farm inspector. I do believe that
driver, a man in his seventies would never eat chicken again when the war
ended. So there was some very funny moments
Rationing was a real
problem for many years even after the war. The UK was so broke that
to import was not an option. Very slowly one item after another was taken
off rationing, but is was a very slow process and it was the late 1950s before
it disappeared for good. I was in the Royal Navy in 1960 and bread was
still rationed to one slice per man per meal. It took what technically was
a mutiny to get this changed.
Aircraft range limited, it had to be the
Navy that took the war to the enemy. The Royal Navy roamed far and wide
and life for the wartime sailor was arduous.
When the Italians under Mussolini entered
the war, the British sunk the entire Italian fleet as it lay at rest in harbour
at a place called Taranto. The RN warships only had Swordfish
aircraft.
These were WW1 canvas covered BI-planes
with open cockpits one behind the other. This relic from the past could
only carry one single torpedo. These aircrew flew repeated sorties against
the Italian fleet and sunk virtually all.
The Italians trained their guns on these
aircraft but the shells always burst ahead of the aircraft with little damage.
This really was a stroke of luck as the Italian gunners could not comprehend
that any aircraft could fly so slowly.
The maximum speed of a Swordfish aircraft
was 85 miles per hour in a dive. Most other aircraft at that time were something
in the order of 300 miles per hour. So our success that day was simply
because we were too slow for the Italians.
The Italians were never very
good fighters and there is one very famous newsreel, shot in the north African
desert of a single British soldier, tin helmet at a rakish angle, with his
bayonet fixed bringing in some 500 or so Italian soldiers who had surrender to
him. Why ??. Because they had lost their supplies and they knew we would
feed them. In the UK it was a standing Joke that the smallest book ever
written was the list of Italian War Heroes.
The Royal Navy saw action in every
theatre. Malta that little Island in the med saw much of the action and to
show our admiration of the Maltese people the Island was awarded "The George
Cross".
This I believe was the very first
time a country held this honour.
Royal Navy losses were becoming
too big and later were reduced with the advent of aircraft carriers providing
that all important air cover. The aircraft had a very essential role to play
from ship borne operations
Aircraft carriers were the key to the American
success in the Pacific as we shall see in later
articles.
Simply
Steve
Democracy Link Page
