WEST ROW GIRL IN WAR TIME.
The impact of the Second World War on a small Suffolk village
My mother wrote her first book ’West Row Girl’ in 2007, in which she described life in the Suffolk village of West Row - a small agricultural community on the edge of the fens, in the pre-war period. The book was a valuable social history that gave us a vivid impression of village life and was so well received that she has decided to continue her narrative.

’West Row Girl in Wartime’ covers the momentous events that occurred between 1936 and 1945. The book is not merely a historical recount of the many battles and campaigns of the war but rather how the war and the build-up to war affected the village community.

There is a vivid depiction of the growing awareness of what total war will mean to the village, as the country slid towards conflict - the issue of gas masks, the construction of air raid shelters, pillboxes, the sand bags round public buildings and the blackout. The attention to detail is impressive.
In the war period too, there are descriptions of the new roles people undertook, of air raids, of near misses, of the hardship of rationing, of prisoners of war and of tragedies - but there is humour too: the member of the Home Guard who fainted when it was his turn to throw a live hand grenade; or of the Home Guard spraying the Baptist Chapel with machine gun fire when on firearms training; or of the fire in the fish shop being mistaken for a German invasion - so redolent of Dad’s Army.
There is also a poignant portrayal of a young girls’ first attempts at using make-up, bought from Woolworths, were else and of the author, paying for dance classes herself and then teaching her cousins, so that they could attend the dances at the RAF camp gymnasium.
There is also much evidence of the strength of the community of massive fund - raising, of supporting each other, of sharing cuts of meat in the village when the family pig was slaughtered and of the of the distribution of funds to all returning members of the armed forces that came from the village, at the end of the war.

West Row Girl in Wartime is a well written and vivid description of how a rural village community and a young girl were changed for ever by war.
Tim Jenkins 2011
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