大象传媒

A Childs Wartime Memories from Somerset

I lived in Ditcheat on a farm. We frequently had army troops camped in the fields.

On one very hot June day in 1940 when I was four years old, someone came to tell my father that King George VI was coming to see the troops. I presumed that this was to present medals to the men who had been involved in Dunkirk. I was taken along our track which led to a field alongside the road from Evercreech Junction station, which was on the Somerset-Dorset railway, to see him as he travelled past in his car.

I can remember that it was kept very secret and we were not allowed to tell anyone. Though one lady had heard that he was coming, and she telephoned her husband from the Railway hotel to ask him to bring down her best hat.

September 3rd 1942, I was 6 years old.

Early in the morning, milk was taken in churns to the local milk factory at Castle Cary station by car and trailer from the farm. I was sitting in the car eating an apple that I had collected from the orchard. Suddenly a German aircraft flew very low over a train standing at the station, there was a large explosion and as the plane flew over the doors of the aircraft were opened and I saw two Germans machine gunning the train (GWR from Plymouth-Weymouth line to Paddington). I instinctively ducked down under the dashboard of the car until my father pulled me out and took me to the shadows of the factory. The aircraft had previously dropped two bombs killing a signalman and several other people died afterwards, a third bomb landed in the river; and a fourth in the local Railway Station hotel.

After the raid, the milk in those large square open vats was covered in black dust and my apple was black too!!

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