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This story was submitted to the people war Website by a volunteer from Tiverton Museum of Mid Devon Life on behalf of Stan Cilcott.

Stan Chilcott.

I was born in South London. I have lived in Silverton for fifteen years since retiring. At the outbreak of war I was eight years old and living in South London. I was evacuated for a short time during the blitz. But I was very unhappy away from home and soon returned to live with my parents. My main thoughts about the blitz concern the noise — the occasional bomb whistling and exploding, but mainly the guns — shells going into the sky to keep enemy bombers at bay. We didn’t get much sleep because of the noise at night. School was for a half a day and if you could grab a bit of sleep during the day you did.

My aunt and her son and daughter came down to the Cotswolds to live during the war. I was lucky enough on my school holidays to join them. I can vividly remember the first experience of coming away from London with all its noise and what have you, and descending into the beautiful countryside and the quietness of the cottage. But I was still to find that, though it was so nice and peaceful, it wasn’t quite what I was used to, shall we say, as a townie. When we arrived (I came down with my parents and my sister for 2 or 3 days and I was to stop on during the school holidays) the toilet was a sort of closet at the end of the garden which was built of stone with a wooden roof and door. This was a little bit if a shock to me. And then I found out that the only form of cooking was a fire and a primus stove that boiled the kettle. And then, of course, in the evening you had oil lamps to light your way. To my mind though it was absolutely fantastic because you went upstairs to bed and I can picture the room now. It was very, very spacious because it took over the whole floor area of the cottage more or less. And there wasn’t a ceiling. You had the four main beams which supported the roof and it was very spacious, airy, quiet and peaceful.

I think it was probably the next day I caused trouble in the village. It was during the summer, there was a drought, and I was asked to go down to the village and get some water from the tap (only one tap for about twenty cottages) there was a line of buckets there and the first bucket was almost full of water, and under a tap that was just dripping. So I got hold of the nearly full bucket, emptied it in to my aunt’s and proceeded to go back to the cottage. I soon found out this was not quite the thing to do because during the heat wave there was hardly any water and the only supply available in the village was from this dripping tap. There we were, a queue of buckets waiting, and there was me, a cocky/cockney Londoner, picking up someone’s bucket, emptying the water into mine and off I went. There was nearly a riot but my aunt tried to explain to everyone that I didn’t really understand. But I must confess, I can remember now the annoyance on people’s faces.

I suppose my very first memories of hostilities was before war was declared because I was on holiday down in Seaford and a Spitfire came down very, very low across the beach with all the holiday makers there, and it’s camouflaged, and the noise that a Spitfire makes and I can see that plane swooping down and flying right up the beach and disappearing into the distance even now. It was a marvelous sight for a little boy. When war was actually declared my Mother sort of told me about it and we went round to the shops and I can remember I picked up my double-barrelled shot gun just in case I saw a German, you know round at the shops. And off I went. I can remember how devastated my mother was with the news. She was really so very, very upset about it. And I came to realize when I became older that for someone of her generation who’d been through the First World War when there was such a loss of soldiers and what have you, obviously she was devastated to know that we were going to have another war with so many of the lads killed. Happily it could be said perhaps that it wasn’t quite so horrendous though there was, of course, a huge loss of life. Again I went off, evacuated to a place called Reading. And I’m sorry to say I only lasted the week because I hated every minute of it. At that age I realized that something was very wrong and that I was leaving my parents and it did occur to me: Would my parents be there when I came back. And I remember writing a letter home and my sister talked to her friend and they wondered whether it was a good thing for the letter to be posted but they sent it off and the next thing I remember, my father turned up to bring me back to London. Then of course we had the blitz which was horrendous. All can remember really was what was happening on Wandsworth Common which was quite close to me. First of all they put up a balloon barrage unit, with the cylinders and the great big balloon and the winch to winch it up into the sky to try and stop the bombers. Then they dug trenches right across the field to stop the planes landing with troops in. And then of course we had the Home guard, which was slightly later in the war, and all these guys used to turn up to Wandsworth Common and they used to do their field exercises. Then you had, say, about twenty Home Guard crawling through the bushes with their rifles, followed by about forty little boys crawling after ‘em. And I must confess I was one the little boys. Another thing I can remember is how I hated gas masks. They really terrified me and my parents felt I’d really got to learn to put on one of these on in case there was a gas attack. They tried and tried and tried to get me to put the thing and in the end I did. But the whole think terrified me and I can feel now how terrified I was of it. These are the memories of a child. As I got older, got into my teens, I became far more flippant about it all I suppose. I can remember on one occasion when we had the fly bombs flying over, I was on my way back from school, it was during an alert and I wasn’t bothered about sheltering even though the siren had gone. I was cycling back home and a fly bomb was flying parallel to me on the bottom road. As I passed various property blocks I was able to look down the road and there was the fly bomb. And I can remember thinking to myself that while the thing’s flying I was safe. The thing went on and I just went home. I had to get my own tea because my parents were both out. Needless to say I didn’t tell my mother about this occurrence.

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