大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War web site by a volunteer on behalf of George Glover and has been added to the site with his permission. He fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

My war was spent in the village of Whitley in Surrey, some 25 miles South of London 鈥榓s the crow flies鈥�.

Born in 1937 my memories start about 1942. Soldiers, not speaking English, came to help with the harvest. These were Polish soldiers who had escaped from their own country and had come to England to help fight the Germans. They came from a camp some 6-8 miles away to help the Land Army girls who were working on the farm. My father, who was too old to fight and was needed on the land, was the tractor driver and鈥� with only 3 other men on the largish farm these girls had to do all the other work. This included working with the 6 wonderful cart horses.

As the war moved on the Polish Soldiers were moved away and their camp taken over by Canadian troops. I can remember as a boy of 6 learning the Canadian National Anthem at school so that we could sing it at a Christmas party given at their army camp in 1943. We were taken there in army lorries and were given a present as we left to go home.

The first conflict of the war that I remember were the aircraft dog fights. As we lived on the top of the north downs we often watched the British planes attacking the Germans in the sky.

As a young boy my sister and I had to walk to school, about a mile and a half, and the each lunch time we would run home for lunch and back to school for the afternoon. All this in an hour. Although we had no air raid shelters in the school we had to practice each morning to dive under our desks if the air raid warning went, which was usually after the first bombers had gone over! I can also remember the school windows with the criss-cross sticky tape stuck over the glass as a safety precaution.

It鈥檚 funny but most of my memories seem to be in the summer because I was an outdoor child, always in the surrounding woods looking for birds鈥� nests or climbing trees. We had some evacuee children in the school, but they lodged in the village and did not often come up the lane to where we lived. We didn鈥檛 object as later on we only had to go to school in the morning so they could go in the afternoon, which gave us a lot of time off!

In 1944 we were in school at about 11.00 when we heard aircraft overhead. A few minutes later the school was rocked by a tremendous explosion and we all dived under the desks. Then the air raid warning sounded! Our older sister found us amongst the chaos of screaming children and the head teacher trying to calm things down. We were sent home for lunch.

Our older sister, who had left school and was working as a mothers help for the head master, and my twin sister and myself, started to go home. As we went up the lane and around the first bend we saw piles of leaves, twigs and small branches all over the road. There was utter silence as the birds were not singing. None of the trees had a leaf on them. This was mid June and the trees were beech and chestnut, some of them 60 feet high. To make matters clear this lane had banks on either side about 10-15 feet high and as we went forth up this lane there was a point where the banks flattened out and we could see the fields on the right with trees completely leafless. On the left the sheep were running round in circles or were flat on their backs with a land girl trying to get them up. At the next bend we could see some soldiers and airmen gathered around what had once been a huge beech tree 70-80 feet high. It was split down the middle with most of its branches gone.

When we got to the tree we were not allowed to go by. Although my elder sister explained that we lived just around the bend, we had to go into the field and around the farm buildings. We could see our home with some of the tiles from the roof missing. The top of the chimney was gone as were all the windows. Some soldiers, my Dad and the farm foreman were getting canvas sheets and ladders off a trailer. As we reached the door, Mum was in the back kitchen making a pot of tea with her hair covered in plaster, her dress looking like a white smock with the radio playing workers playtime. All she said to us was 鈥渓ook at the state your in!鈥�

When the explosion happened Mum had been in the 鈥榣oo鈥�, which was half outside, and the ceiling had collapsed on her. The house was a real mess with no windows and all the ceilings down and broken glass everywhere. For the next month or two the house was covered in canvas until supplies could be found for the repairs and for weeks we would find pieces of glass in bits of furniture and in rugs on the bedroom floors.

This damage had been caused by a 鈥楧oodle-Bug鈥� which had dropped into the giant beach tree and exploded there. Other memories of these un-piloted bombs occurred again at harvest time. One came over about 7.00 in the evening, my sisters and I were out gleaning in the fields (that is picking up loose ears of wheat that had not been caught in the binders sheaves). It was hot and we were taking a break with some of the Canadian soldiers who were helping us out. We caught the sound of the Air raid warning and at the same moment we heard the sound of a 鈥楧oodle-bug鈥� coming from behind the trees to the south. After a couple of minutes three of them came into view and, when they were overhead, one of them stopped running whilst the other two continued on towards London. Now, when these bombs stopped running they would normally drop straight down and explode, as we sat there my twin sister and I were grabbed by a Canadian soldier and were thrown into a dry ditch under a hedge. Everyone else sought the same cover. We were kept down and could not see what was happening- we waited for the explosion- but this never came and after a while everyone came out to see what was happening, but the 鈥楧oodle-bug could be seen drifting northward getting lower and lower until it crashed into a farm on the Hogs Back killing seven people there.

Other memories include the bombers flying over at night and my being allowed to stand under the apple trees in the garden watching the silhouettes of them against the stars. One of our neighbours was a lad of 15 and he could tell us what type of aircraft they were. He could also carve model aircraft out of wood, which we all thought was very clever.

I met up with all types of soldiers encamped in the surrounding woods awaiting the D Day movements. There were French Canadian, American, Polish and some that we never knew where they were from as they couldn鈥檛 speak English, but with all these men hidden in the depths of woods our parents never had any fear of allowing us to go out to meet them. I remember coming home with a tin of pineapple or peaches or maybe ham or corned beef, given quite freely to us by these soldiers, and of course chewing gum and chocolate!

In those days, as a boy of six or seven, I was very much a loner. I would wander through the woods and fields quite happy to be on my own, watch the birds and rabbits or, in the spring, pick primroses and later bunches of large daisies to take home for my Mum. Also in the woods were wild strawberries, raspberries and red currants which I would collect. I also remember going to collect mushrooms in the early morning with my Dad and older sister.

I recall listening to Mum鈥檚 wireless. Programs like ITMA with Tommy Handley, Saturday Night at Eight, Music While You Work and Charlie Cuntz, the pianist, and Much Binding in the Marsh and, of course, the voice of Vera Lynn, coming out from Housewives Choice.

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