Christmas 1944 the great British countryside setting for one of the most pivotal battles of the Second World War Churchill called it the frontline of freedom and it was fought by the farmers of Bryn it was the battle to feed a nation over the course of a year archeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn and historian Ruth Goodman worked Manor Farm in Hampshire as it would have been during the Second World War now Ruth and Peter are returning to manna farm to recreate the conditions of Christmas 1944 the 6th of the war a bit of fun at Christmas this time there without Alex so they'll have their work cut out with shortages biting deeper than ever the Southeast of England was in the grip of the worst bombing campaign since the Blitz of 1914 Ruth and Peter are about to discover how the countryside came to the aid of people living in cities in their hour of need they provided food well country Christmas for the townspeople this isn't it drink we've got a magical Christmas proof and gifts to lift the spirits happy Christmas this is the untold story of the wartime farm at Christmas in 1939 at the outbreak of war the government set farmers strict targets to double homegrown food production by 1944 they grew an additional six and a half million acres of crops an area the size of Wales but by December 1944 farmers faced a new challenge five years of fighting a devastated farmland and transport across Europe food was becoming scarce the government demanded an extra 700,000 acres of pasture to be ploughed up farmers were fighting a battle to grow crops on unsuitable land that was prone to flooding hedging and ditch in a really winter jobs especially round here where we have such trouble with drainage keeping the ditches open and clear is vital to the productivity of the land there's a whole network of ditches here round all the fields all kind of carry the water so the plan is to make all this water drain out into the river just that faster rather than sitting in the land more time Britain there were no machines that you could really turn to for this it still had to be done traditionally in the old hand way with people and spades and rakes and billhooks you can start to see this water flowing already it just proves how blocked up this ditch was undertaking hard physical work on a rationed wartime diet was particularly challenging eyes I've got your pies don't forget so the Ministry of food set up the rural pie scheme to fill the stomach's of hard-working farm laborers professor Karen Sayer has researched how the scheme worked by 1944 it was distributing over a million pies a week imagine the logistical effort involved there and it runs from 1941 through beyond the walls so they're keeping people going and this was all part of the attempt to provide more calories for those involved in heavy physical life absolutely literally feed them take points and it really did mean that women in uniform turned up in fields carrying trays of pies really please I just love it so British isn't it you know hey we haven't got enough food I know what we'll do we'll have a National pie scheme the pies were distributed by one of the most important organizations of the Second World War the women's voluntary service founded in 1938 by Stella Isaacs marcin s of reading at its peak the WVS had over a million members often older middle class ladies they did whatever they could to support the war effort Christmas 1944 saw them called into action in cities helping families who had lost everything in the bombing they fed them found them accommodation clothing and even toys for children so by 44 the women and the voluntary services in the cities are stretched absolute max moment they're getting really punch-drunk and they're having to call on the women in the countryside through the WVS to come in and help them so somebody like me then who'd spent the rest of the war at my countryside why not have been particularly comfortable in town maybe suddenly finds me I was helping people who've been struggling on for years yes I said no having had this great movement of townspeople out into the countryside there's a beginning also of a movement of country people moving back into the towns to give he'll offer real practical help for people who by this point are in considerable distress who are absolutely worn down and wit's end they deal with everything and they just try to make everybody's life a little bit better in 1944 London was under threat from terrifying new Nazi weapons the V bombs first came the V ones known as doodlebugs unmanned flying bombs difficult to detect by radar when they reach their target the engine cut putting the bomb into a deadly dive at their peak more than a hundred doodlebugs a day were hitting London causing almost 23,000 casualties Christine white lived in London as a small child and remembers the devastation they caused the doodle burgers oh I hated that sound and you know you could see him I mean I can remember watching one once you know just watching this thing going over and suddenly it stopped my mum I was on the street my mum's Ken Harry now drag means getting him on one point my school was bombed but luckily they got all the children into the shelters and things like that in September 1944 the Nazis unleashed a new even more terrifying weapon the v2 rocket at least 500 hit London killing some 9,000 civilians traveling at over 3,000 miles per hour they seemingly appeared from nowhere bringing terror and loss of life wherever they fell many also had to cope with the loss of family and friends on the battlefield by Christmas 1944 hundreds of thousands of British servicemen and women had been killed for Christine this was to be the first Christmas without her father he had been killed six months earlier during the d-day landings I presume your mother heard fairly quickly yes I mean it's it's odd because I remember she was running down the road with his paper in her hand and then I'm thinking what's going on you know she was obviously very upset it must have been a telegram I presume but they didn't tell children that someone had died in those days could she just suddenly wonder why isn't daddy around you know why is he not home Christine still treasures the letters her father sent her before he died a crumb of comfort as the bombs rained down and Christmas approached is he from your father yes is from my dad and he's saying things like look after mummy for me and hope you learn all your ABC by the time I come home yes tell mommy I love you both oh yeah don't some of them do yeah Christmas 44 must have been a pretty grim Christmas for you huh yes I mean I don't remember much about it at all so it must have been very much a a non-event you know to protect people from bombing in 1939 the government issued over one and a half million domestic air-raid shelters although they offered some protection their shortcomings were quickly exposed lots of people during the war really after that initial enthusiasm Brandes and shelters found them less than ideal for a start they tended to flood any heavy rain and you could find yourself more will ankle-deep in water and then there was also the problem of just how secure they were there were awful stories of people who were buried alive inside their Anderson shelters and that put a lot of people off using them so increasingly they became rather abandoned and like me people started using them what was storage than anything else my Christmas 1944 many had been abandoned London by far the most populated city in Britain took the brunt of the attacks so people there sought out deeper communal air-raid shelters where they decamped sometimes for weeks on end it fell to organizations like the Women's Institute Red Cross Salvation Army and women's voluntary service to provide relief especially at Christmas I was talking to Karen about the WVS you know never took so much about what that group and other groups were doing for people in emergency situation and I was sort of wondering if we ought to do our bit in the countryside you've got that access to ingredients how many we might not have very many as a traditional Christmas in greens but we have got plenty of food here one wearing other good food is fresh food it's food that's gonna lift people's spirits and this is the one day of the year when I suppose everyone just wants to forget there's a war on just celebrate life but we want to do something for the children though as well really yeah sort of form of distraction toys or something array out games yeah I mean they wouldn't be much in the shops in 1944 to buy a child you would have to have made it this is the thing you don't buy Christmas you make Christmas Christmas isn't about what you can buy in shops Christmas about the people you gather around you and what you do with your time yeah all that is the truth isn't it everything else can go until now it had been the role of the countryside to grow food for the nation and to take in a vacuous from the cities by 1944 when many London streets reduced to rubble and services at breaking point the country people headed for the city to help the government recognized that one thing in particular was vital to keeping a British morale beer they instructed it should never be rationed and during the war production rose by 1/3 Churchill demanded all frontline troops should receive four pints a week and women factory workers were encouraged to drink beer for the first time becoming known as the pipe pop girls the main ingredient of beer is malting barley and before the war nearly 40% was grown abroad the war cut off imports so Brewers were forced to water down their beer to meet demand by 1944 shortages became so acute that the Ministry of food aged Brewers to experiment with alternative ingredients Peter's going to make his own beer a morale booster for those forced to spend Christmas underground is calling on expert in rural crafts Colin Richards for help you see it's a dark it's dump and nobody knows where they are during the war it was imperative that nothing went to waste so when the Ministry of food got wind of a surplus of potatoes they suggested they should be used to make beer Colin surplus is stored in a tunnel was it common to keep potatoes on the ground war well the Ministry of supply requisitioned a lot of underground workings for the storages sort of military boots particular some ammunition torpedoes etc but for sort of farms and farmers in the rural areas that had old mine workings you know it was an opportunity to keep things safe and not just for themselves but for other villages and for whole communities so that if there was an incident you know if there were bombs or if there were you know the smashing of services you know sewers water then the food wouldn't be lost the first stage in making the beer is to crush the potatoes a job that calls for a bit of improvisation and Collins coal-powered ambulance Henry and I have been given our instructions by : potato beer sounds a bit strange apparently makes you fart I've been told wash potatoes which we've done bagged the potatoes in small sacks which we've done and lay the potatoes out on a metal track which we're doing because basically these potatoes have to be somehow broken up so we can release the starches and the sugars to make our wort which forms the basis for our beer Colleen has got an idea along those lines well that's exactly what we want really isn't it actually perfect we crush it enough to expose the inner surface of the potato but not so much that it's just going to turn into one big stodgy mess rationing and shortages made celebrating Christmas a challenge despite this the women's voluntary service tried to make it as normal as possible for displaced families magazines published ideas on creating make do and mend decorations Lancers from any bit of colored paper I got metal or paper I found a birth Karen's getting tips from the 1944 land girls newsletter on using the paper recovering around the fruit of the fissile is plant commonly known as Chinese lanterns during the war they were a garden favorite here the letter to the editor says I would like to suggest the use of Chinese lanterns which are food thingies for Christmas decorations strip the lantern from the stalk of the plant and thread cotton through the stalks of the lanterns they look very nice hung around pictures or make you provide splash of colors through the frost room as paper chains used to be strong and in fact they're absolutely right it is making the most beautiful Christmas decoration look at this that is going to be gorgeous and it is very colorful but you can imagine in families that have been bombed out that been there suffered all sorts of trauma if they could have salvaged something like this that's part of the family in a sense it would help them to remember that and it would help them to remember perhaps lost family members that are no longer with them so I think it's something that becomes very powerful actually Christmas trees were scarce as wood was taken by the war effort type controls on the use of paper meant decorations were reused year after year and with the fall of the far eastern rubber plantations - the Japanese balloons were scarce of the enemy inadvertently dropped an ideal Christmas decoration from the sky strips of metal foil called chaff well this was dropped by enemy planes to confuse the radar to make it look like a huge force was coming over and dry so everything German plane would come over Chuck this choice stuff out yeah we look at our radar screens we think oh my goodness there's a huge squadron coming if we scramble everybody they all go up in the air I'd be nothing yeah so you'll pick this up over the fields and it's kind of one of the eye for the germs right I mean I'm gonna turn this into a Christmas decoration do you think this is a false Maryville it's not at the Christmas decoration so I suppose these sort of things you know just sort of to cheer people up aren't they really a bit of fun at Christmas something a bit different some sort of feeling of a special day I can't do it by buying loads of stuff you can't do it by giant expensive presents you can't do it by over indulging in posh food you've got to do it with somehow and using any resource that you have to hand in the spirit of wartime improvisation Colin too is using any resources he has to hand to build a makeshift Christmas brewery right this is a sort of mash tun I suppose we're gonna pop the potatoes in here pop some water in here and it will gently heat but it won't boil and that will hopefully bring out the starches and the sugars SiC some water in the bottom first this sugar starch solution known as wort will form the basis of the beer time for the Tassie's or their nicely crushed I've got cognitive Colin how about you I think so because you know everything you need to make beer we've got here we've got sort of heat we got the potatoes so everything else is down to nature really I like the fact you class potatoes is something you need to make beer and I suppose in 1943 with shortages in 1944 it kind of Wars you know keeping morale up and particularly at Christmas it was very important as along our shoulders is that there will be if you drop that right I suppose we just need to fill this up with water now it wasn't just ingredients for the beer that were in short supply containers to put the beer in were becoming increasingly scarce by 1944 I've just been hunting around the farm for a container to put our beer in and the obvious choice is a barrel they are beautiful pieces of craftsmanship and they are built to last but sadly because it's an organic material they don't well that's that's dry rot this is pretty much useless I mean back in the day we could have just fixed this but during the war you can't get hold of this oak because although we've got oak in Britain it's the wrong type of okano it sounds absurd but it's all it's all knotty and gnarly and it's tough to work and this stuff was coming from the Baltics but that is completely cut off so we're going to have to be slightly inventive about where we get a container for our beer and is quite critical because beer it will condition in its container wartime Brewers turn to an ancient alternative using a raw material Britain still had in abundance clay Peters calling on the services of putter Mike Fletcher to make some wartime beer flagons suppose during the war or pottery wasn't a reserved occupations all those young potters have been training up they would go up they've gone I've gone off nicely or the old boys and little like myself they're too old to fight but still can pot throw a left behind so we're extremely busy but next day to feed it if we open the player and then I can then start squeezing from the bottom and then stop pulling the clay oh yeah this flagon will hold a gallon but during the war even bigger stoneware containers were made to hold nine gallons so big they had to be reinforced with iron rings you make it look so easy like the neck like so in 1944 the V weapons destroyed thousands of homes in London leaving many children not just homeless but without any possessions many had never known a peacetime Christmas the women's voluntary service recognized the importance of toys in distracting children from the horror that surrounded them and began a drive for makeshift Christmas presents Second World War expert Biff Ravenhill has come to help Ruth turn household waste into dolls house furniture it's all just rubbish really isn't it the sort of things that most people would throw out in a modern world just sort of finding a new life and they use tiny little bits and bobs making toys from junk had been a popular pastime before the war and this 1930s book practical suggestions in toy making is full of ideas for children but now in wartime it became a necessity I mean nowadays there is a sort of dolls house industry and people can buy ready-made bits and bobs but dolls houses will really do-it-yourself weren't they do more now I found this and this is a Christmas 1943 and of course there were lots of articles in here let's say modern doesn't matter for let the house go home I love it and it's basically made out of wire and bits of canvas and it's just been round just a few yards of flexible wire a bit of gummed paper tape the sort pasted onto windows during the Blitz and a fragment of material from the peace box can be converted into an enchanting set of furniture for the dolls of course during the war all resources were so precious and every single bit of everything was saved and scavenge and because things like these cigarette packets so many people smoke that there would have been tons of these in the same with matchboxes of course and that's all been made out of match boxes then cigarette cards I noticed as well yes to collect at the time well these make super pictures for a bedroom wall or a sitting room wall yes again you can nose mat right dude okay long yeah little frame to make tiny frames now you're making a little bedspread on yeah I am Allah made a pillow it's adding some kind of doleful isn't it is a bit yes good you'll cover nice on the top there's a truth let's go for it the beer flagon has dried now it must be glazed to make it watertight a nose and there it is glazed exactly is glazed a glazed glass its sealing the pot so there's tiny tiny particles of glass of hail really at the end of the day yes because it's the same recipe as glass the neck is also glazed traditionally a darker shade we've added red iron oxide and 2 percent and 2 percent magnesia and that will give it that lovely honey colored take it like that it's heavier than you think nice and level so look at the top top yeah and that and you want to go about an inch past the shoulder here we go go on down down down and then up fantastic one glazed the part must be fired at 1,300 degrees Celsius so Cohen is rigging up a makeshift kiln hey here we are : well what do you think you made that highlights I did but I didn't alright to reach this temperature they're using a highly combustible fuel brought to Britain during the Second World War by American troops propane propane gas such as this was discovered in 1910 is a byproduct of the refining process of making petrol and it was very very big in America and it was essentially introduced to the UK when the troops came across because we basically had town gas so it was produced by coal and after the Second World War propane gas had it's golden age it became a major fuel source not only in America but also this country as well anyway we should get littleness yes well it's not just a lid you've wanted to get as much benefit out of this gas that's going in so I thought what we could do is actually create another chamber where we could put resinous pine and try and extract some pitch and some oil air to the point during the war fuel was precious and wasn't to be wasted so in true wartime spirit Colin is also using the kilns heat to make pine oil when pine wood is heated to around 300 degrees Celsius oil is released it can be used as a lubricant or to protect wood and metal from corrosion a great resource to have around a wartime farm in the areas where there were a lot of pine forests you would do this on a colossal scale really with the pine oil and the pot cooking away the beer is flavored with hops and the fermenting of sugar in the potatoes into alcohol is begun with yeast producing beer and gifts would go a long way to bring Christmas cheer to those under attack in cities but people also looked for comfort and hope from another more spiritual source places of worship at a vital role to play especially at Christmas since Bartholomew's Church is where workers at Manor farm have prayed for centuries this is the sixth Christmas of the war and much has changed since peacetime many of our loved ones are still far from home and will again not be joining us this Christmas the danger of invasion has now passed and with quiet confidence we can see the end in sight before the war religion had been declining in popularity but by Christmas 1944 there had been a marked change the church had quite a special place in wartime Britain for many people it was a source of great comfort and strength but then there were other people who found at the war turned them right off religion and you noticed that the numbers of people going to church begin to fall very rapidly after the Second World War it was a time when people went one way or the other a sort of polarization when some turn to the church with more further perhaps than they'd had before and others turned away the government was looking to the church for a binding together of the community of all people and this was happening well right across the whole of the Western world Stalin amazingly in Russia you know having banned religion actually rien couraged Christianity during the war hoping for this effect amongst the Russian population before once again banning religion afterwards and our government thought that the church could offer something that bound the British people together it wasn't just a British people that church bound together by Christmas 1944 one in five farm workers would German or Italian prisoners of war as Godfrey white recalls he became friends with two Germans stationed nearby do you remember prisoners of war oh yes yeah yeah we I know to by name Breck shone nobody's died now but George Gabbar is still alive they both married ladies from from the area some were accepted by the local church and there are accounts of them singing carols to the congregation in German ah you know how they were so regarded by the wider community there was a little bit of not quite everything didn't go smoothly but the ones I knew very good but I'm very well with him I suppose it's very easy to always think of Germans as Nazis but all right hmm very shown he was ended off an SS night he was in the Hitler Youth and was forced into a heavy light right rather than volunteer yeah so it was a sort of you had to yeah both Frank and as I say Jorge Guevara both involved himself with the church a bottlee hmm so the church is very much a central that can very much a center community yeah especially a time like this at Christmas and you can put your differences aside after six hours of brewing Peters come to see how the potato beer is coming along we give it a go right almost looks like been it this yes smells good it does isn't it it's very hoppy and it's quite sweet and it's very hot actually it's very nice it's lovely it is I'd I'd certainly you know welcome this type of beer yeah so our little clay pot for our beer is cooking away in the kiln the oil is coming out and it almost tastes like we've got a magical Christmas brew it certainly does Oh working for the war effort came in addition to the day-to-day duties of running the farm 365 days a year even Christmas Day as washer had as off first I'm sure she's reasonably clean so that nothing gets into the milk but unlike those living in cities country people didn't have to survive purely on rations our pals really represent one of the major differences between life and food particularly for country dwellers to those who are living in the towns all the milk officially from all of our cows goes into the central rationing system prioritizing mothers and babies in particular but as an incentive farmers were allowed to take as much milk as they wanted from their cars for personal use so there's no shortage on milk butter and cream for us Peter's also busy on the farm heating the pine wood on the kiln as extracted oil that's quite nice he's using it to weatherproof farm tools I can't believe that we managed to get so much oil in such great oil out of so little wood fantastic Ruth and Peter are going to leave the countryside and head to London to bring some Christmas cheer as many farmers did in 1944 they've made improvised presents for children and created makeshift decorations to brighten up underground air-raid shelters the clay flagons are fired and filled with morale-boosting potato beer communal feeding was also important to keep spirits up a job undertaken by the women's voluntary service in London routes going to help cook a wvs style Christmas feast by the 6th Christmas of the war food rationing was more severe than ever traditional fare was not an option so they had to find alternatives yet at times there were huge surpluses of vegetables this was thanks to the government's dig for victory campaign nothing went to waste in wartime so Ruth's kept a surplus of carrots in the Anderson shelter for Christmas boy have I got a lot of carrots least we got something for Christmas going down well I think this beer is really gonna food throughout Collins coal powered ambulance is only capable of traveling short distances so Ruth and Peter are taking the train to London unlike petrol which was in short supply coal was a fuel that Britain had in abundance all right that seems a bit fragile before the war the railways had employed over 500,000 men but with a hundred thousand of them called up to fight like so many other roles in wartime their shoes were filled by women we're just trudging with those couple ins aren't like is amazing Jamal you get women doing absolutely everything on the railways real a heavy work except for driving trains and it's the only thing they didn't draft women in for it takes so long to train an engine driver that that remained with the male workers who had the experience women doing the shunting women doing the port room women in the booking lodges women in the signal boxes women losing fingers women losing fingers with rail travel the only viable option over long distances by 1944 passenger numbers had doubled getting a seat was a luxury troops and war related Freight took priority so journeys were often delayed and sometimes painfully slow we're lucky to be able to go on a train really aren't we I mean when you think how much pressure the railways where I mean during this period the law removing all the munitions they're moving all the troops around the place they're trying to do is such a large proportion of the freight to get it off the road you have to keep the roads read you get this huge pressure and running extra trains but they're also specially saying is your journey necessary oh yes my services yeah important more workers I'm going to go have a look at the GPO you know the male see little bit during the war the Royal Mail was entirely dependent on the railways to move post around the country on top of the surge in passenger traffic there were some 350 million items of posts to move at Christmas with families split apart by war more Christmas cars than ever was sent ruth is meeting post office historian cyril parsons to see how in coat this is such an iconic image to travel in post office irene did they keep running right through at the war oh the actual sorting of letters on the train ceased in about the middle of 1940 and the reckoning is that the service was curtailed because the trains were disrupted by bombing and so forth turns out to be re routed and of course traveling post offices had previously run to very strict time-tables over strict rooms but of course the trains were still vital for actually carrying the letter T but all the extra mail to and from those in the Armed Forces was bulky so the post office came up with an ingenious solution the air graph to save space letters were miniaturized into microfilm flown to their destination then blown up and printed at the other end quite early in the war the imposing came to photograph the letters which were written on standard forms and you could perhaps have 1500 letters on one roll of film taking up far far less space so you get something sort of that size that's right in the air repelling yes flying across arriving in a post office in Britain and then somebody has to sort of open the film and undeveloped it and each frame then becomes a letter that goes through the standard mail that's right these are just incredible aren't they this is a really lovely one dear dad just to wish you a happy Christmas and may all your wishes for the new year come true your loving son Eric and at the bottom here's hoping in this busy system creaking at the scenes how much more important at Christmas than at any other time I mean keeping these communication lines open must have been well just so emotionally important to people the Lord Nelson locomotive built in 1926 actually worked on these routes during whole um thank you the task of running an overloaded and overstretched rail system 24 hours a day seven days a week was made even more difficult at night by the blackout fireman Bob Cartwright joined the railways 50 years ago and was trained by drivers who worked through the war you can imagine at night the glare from the firemen saw one of these in and it was a danger of enemy aircraft so the whole cab was cheated in there would be the sheet top of the cab I am there anything stop Floyd shall we so you couldn't really see where you were going and of course one of these engines actually ran into a fragrance in Tennessee just went straight in but I suppose all that extra pressure during the war all indexing journeys must've had quite cold there was when you share the work in and there was a tremendous camera robbery you'd help one another out very old-fashioned system while I'm fortunate to retire the debt with modern thinking Peter and Ruth are heading to Chislehurst southeast of London just ten miles from the city center oh it's lovely and write me again oh it's Christmas isn't it we're lucky ain't snowing 100 feet below ground is one of London's largest wartime air-raid shelters Chislehurst caves are made up of 22 miles of tunnels dug by hand between the 13th and 19th centuries to extract chalk and Flint to build London in 1944 the women's voluntary service along with the Red Cross and the Salvation Army were here to offer food and support to those sheltering from v2 rockets today Jim Gardner owns the caves and his father was a warden here during the war hello good to me how are you very well thank you well welcome to gentle hares caves so what was it like down here in Christmas 1944 hacked it was probably at the height of its use the vetoes were coming down like rain there were 15,000 people down here at the busiest times from all over South London North Kent living down here sheltering from the bombs one or two bombers landed right above us and they didn't hear a thing down here fifteen thousand people living in the caves warmed the air temperature by 10 degrees centigrade and after the war it took a whole year to cool down again the song here says that they were selling tickets six months a week to shelter down here and that covered the cost of the sanitary works that they had to do because if you imagine several thousand people in a cave come morning there's a bit of stuff to move and I suppose since you couldn't hear the bombs down here you could actually get a silent night at Christmas yes apart from 15,000 people breathing and sighing and snoring yes it was a very peaceful night cooking food in the caves would have burnt too much oxygen so the women's voluntary service prepared meals above ground so the WPS actually initially just set up sort of team tea wagons outside such places so the previous yeah some of the people couldn't get a hot cup of tea yeah and they gradually that involved into organizing more food and particular Christmas with turkey scarce stuffed rabbit was a wartime substitute we got loads rabbit me that's gonna be a real country Christmas for the townspeople this isn't it we've got to do enough stuffing for eight bunnies that's made out of parsley and celery which is out of this cool little magazine the Ministry of food produced a booklet in 1944 to help cook a Christmas meal using non rationed ingredients they estimated that only one family in ten would get turkey or goose for their Christmas dinner but a stuffed baked rabbit made a tasty alternative it doesn't do any harm to have loads of stuff in there because those rabbits have got go between everybody chances are that many of the people that we are feeding beings Tani's are not used to eating rabbit whereas you know country people always eat rabbit yeah and there was also a sort of social snobbishness about it as a meat before the war rabbit was a meat of the poorer country sort yeah other people didn't touch it and I sort of slightly snot being stared at it causes water song it starts to look a lot more attractive and you find that townspeople begin keeping rabbits for meat in their backyards whereas originally it had only be in country people who did that yeah you know you sort of see it moving through society rabbit became really popular for a while I noticed it's a real shame really that since the war it's disappeared from the modern British toilet because it is nice underground in Chislehurst caves Peters seeing how the 15,000 Londoners were accommodated sometimes for weeks on end so did people live just wherever they wanted well they were assigned an area for instance this is where it all started you can see the number on the wall a 1 they thought that a 1 2 a 29 3 or 4 big bumps underneath each number that would probably be enough but from then on it just grew and grew they were into the XY z-- and Z's in the end so there is quite a lot of infrastructure down here oh yes by 1944 the government had spent the money they had put in all mod cons and it became an underground town and people lived down here for weeks possibly months at a time their homes in London had been bombed out they had nowhere to go and this was warm not particularly comfortable but it was safe and everything was provided there was an underground cinema Chapel Citizens Advice bureaux even a hospital set up as a full-time facility it had a doctor and two nurses on call every day yeah did you get any births down here one one that we know of and they named her cavener to celebrate the fact she'd been born in a cave not something I think she overly appreciated in later life by Christmas 1944 most of the ingredients needed to cook Christmas dinner were severely rationed so Ruth's making a wartime version of candied orange can they carrot candied carrots is really easy like candy and peel you don't have to be that delicate with if you try and candy holesaw fruit it's a really long at a slow process yeah really catering very easily but carrots and orange peel you can do in a day so you sort of need something has got a little bit of structural integrity to it yeah and then you boil them very briefly really in a sugar syrup the WVS actually got an additional sugar ration for this sort of work which would have helped rationing called for culinary innovation some made their cooking fat go further by mixing paraffin with it while ground dried beans mixed with almond essence replaced marzipan looks much more like orange peel doesn't it my way to bulk out the meager rationed ingredients routes making the most of the carrot glut there will be boiled carrots to accompany the rabbit carrot soup carrot cake and carrot fudge made with grated carrot in gelatine this is just such an odd recipe I think it's another one of these wartime things in which they're trying to sort of mimic familiar food you know you can't make fudge you can't afford fudge because it's made entirely of fat and sugar so how do you make something that gives people a feeling of fudge even though there's next to no fat next to no sugar go to a handful of grated carrots and then that's my orange essence for the grated carrot so I just need to turn it into a basin or a tray and let it set no Christmas Day traditionally a time of peace and goodwill to all mankind but in wartime celebrating Christmas was an act of defiance in the face of death bomb damage and constant shortages in 1944 the population of Britain was more determined than ever to create festive spirit against all odds on Christmas Day itself the bombings stopped the 15,000 people sheltering in Chislehurst caves want to know this so it would be another day spent underground the food prepared by the women's voluntary service is ready and Ruth's joined by Peter who's brought along his potato beer be very careful to spear making very gassy and we are in cave so have a taste tastes all right it just smells horrific it smells my cider that's what it is it smells more like really scrumpy cider food was recognized as vital to maintaining the health and morale of those in emergency situations once again there's the WVS making the most of things jumping in winners an emergency yeah recent Constance's of it certainly work thank you very much keeping morale up and these sort of conditions is really important as an MEP a ward off the cold and hope with a dark you've got to have something that just sort of gives you a G up every now and again well I mean you know we've created a Christmas out of next to nothing we're also out of a surface stock so surplus potatoes to make this beer surplus carrots to make everything carrot E which is much everything down it's a very Gareth Eve real Shirley Carey gone okay carrot fudge candy carrots you can pay yourself Maciek thinking maybe you definitely like some beer tastes better than it smells with so many sheltering underground there was no communal eating area so people simply ate by their beds those who had lost everything to bombing also needed clothing and bedding and again the WVS came to the rescue another blanket here for you can I just touch it on the bed at the back there you're gonna need that later right stick a blindfold on even children's games took on a wartime theme none more popular than pin the moustache on Hitler right he go in your hand you good with that you can feel the pin yeah you're gonna stick that on hit left but first you got these guys gonna spin you around Tommy historian dr. John Martin is an expert on wartime farm him in the direction is this quite a common thing all variations of games like this were very common in the war particularly encouraged by the government to reinforce the idea who the evil people were good outfit on it was propaganda designed to particularly in terms of humiliating a figure who was actually sending over V rockets particularly after stage of the war which were completely indiscriminate trust was poke run yeah poke I think that's very important to poke fun of them that's really good The Salvation Army too specialized in disaster relief providing spiritual support basic comforts and of course music at Christmas 1944 they played here in the caves what an atmosphere I know it's a strange mix isn't it it's a lovely jovial party atmosphere especially in such a confined space but thinking about what must have been going on up there I have to say the whole of this exploring the work the wall time thing I found myself with deeply mixed emotions there's a bit of me that feels full of patriotic pride and there's a bit of me that is in awe of people who somehow found the courage and the energy to go through on Boxing Day at 20 past 9:00 in the evening the bombing of London resumed with a v2 hitting a pub in Islington killing 68 people it will be 8 more long months before the war would finally be over Christmas 1944 will be the last of the Second World War well here's to make doing amendment has to make doing Amanda and here's to a peaceful future I made I never have to be another Christmas underground happy Christmas delicious happy Christmas to find out more about how britain fed itself during the Second World War the Open University has produced a free booklet and online interactive challenges call Oh 8 4 5 3 double 602 5 7 or go to BBC co dot u K for word slash wartime farm happy Christmas well a favorite way to spend Christmas Eve getting in the mood with the traditional carols from King's College Cambridge tonight at 6:15 on BBC 2 the next it's a spring watch guide to the elusive otter you
