大象传媒

Born in the rural country village of Ombersley in December 1931, my parents moved to Hadley shortly afterwards, where we then lived throughout the war years.

SCHOOL DAYS: I started school at Ombersley in January 1937 where I spent the whole of my school years until leaving to start work in December 1945. During this period the War had taken place causing much hardship, suffering and poverty to many throughout the world and in particular the people of our own nation.

Remembering very little of my early years, I do recall my mother having to take me to school in the carrier on the back of her cycle. As I grew up I then had to walk the distance of just over 1 mile to and from the school with no footpaths on country roads in those days. At the age of 12 I had saved enough money from doing a paper round and odd jobs to purchase my first bicycle for 拢2 and eventually able to cycle to school.

START OF WAR: Among my first recollections of War was hearing my parents talk of the invasion of Poland escalating to the invasion of France, when life for many people became very tense. Eventually listening with my parents on our battery/accumulator radios to Mr. Chamberlin's speech to the Country saying we were at War.

From then on every day life became more and more difficult with rationing, the black-out, men and women moved to work in munitions factories, many local men called up into the various services, Home Guard, A.R.P., and Women's Land Army being formed.

EVACUEES: When the bombing of our cities started we began to have many evacuees mainly from the Birmingham area integrated into the local community with many new children at school.
It was during the heavy bombing of Birmingham we shared our schooling in the summer for a period with coach loads of children from that area, one week we would go mornings and they afternoons, the next week we would reverse.

AT WAR: As time went by, Military installations began to appear with several searchlight and anti-aircraft gun sights in the area, nearest to us being just 200 years from our school. This had searchlights, guns, nissan huts, and military personnel stationed there with sentries on the gates which we would see on our way to school every morning.

It was when the bombing of Birmingham started that I began to realise the seriousness of war. Though sirens would sound we could stand outside our house at night and listen and sometimes see the German planes going overhead and then hear the terrific explosions as the bombs landed and see the sky lit up from the fires. During this time the local searchlight and heavy gun batteries would go into action which was very frightening on occaions.

AMERICANS AT WESTWOOD: When the Americans came into the war it wasn't long before Westwood Park became a massive American base. With coloured military on the Droitwich side with coloured sentries on all gates, and white military on the Ombersley side, with white sentries on gates this side. In no time the park was covered with huts, tents, tanks, armour of all descriptions and phones under the trees, all hidden by camouflage netting. They also made a runway for the Tiger Moth planes they used. These we were able to watch from perimeter fence which was not far from our home at Hadley. Regretably most weekends there would be fights galore in Ombersley and Droitwich at the local pubs and dances when the two races clashed in their free time. Luckily I was not old enough to go anywhere near these premises.

WAR EFFORT AT SCHOOL: Among the war efforts at school we were taught to knit, we then able to knit gloves, socks and scarves for local servicemen and women who were away from home.

One of our major projects for the older boys was to grow produce from our very large school garden. This I became very interested in and took great pride in the various projects of growing.

We grew quite a lot of good produce and this was suplied to our school canteen some half a mile away. Our method of transport being a large trolley which was provided for us. Usually on a Monday morning we would load with whatever we had ready, which could be considerable on occasions, then two of us older boys would pull it up to our canteen at the village hall where we had to go for our dinners every day.

We were all encouraged to work in efforts to produce food, in particular older boys and girls were urged to help local farmers with potato harvest. This was hard work as they all had to be picked up by hand. My pal and I undertook to dig the huge vicarage garden which we did nights after school. This we enjoyed as we were given a super tea each time we went and paid 6d. (old money) per hour. This also applied to one or two older people whose garden we dug, but didn't get tea, perhaps a piece of cake on occasions.

MOCK BATTLES: I remember well on one occasion, being children on holiday from school, we had wandered onto the main road, which was really forbidden by our parents, but there appeared to be a lot of military activity about, and we were keen to see what was happening. Suddenly we were grabbed by soldiers who put us in a deep ditch by a machine gun post and told to keep down as a battle for the cross roads was about to take place. In no time tanks and armoured vehicles came roaring down the road. It was chaos with dummy bullets and grenades flying everywhere; the noise was horrendous and our nearest experience of war - a lesson we never forgot.

D-DAY: Near to D-Day we arrived at school one morning to find our playground filled with tanks and armoured vehicles all covered in netting. Our playground was out of bounds that day, but all had gone by next day. We had assumed they had moved from Westwood and on their way to War.

Having spent my school days during the War with very limited opportunities I remember very little of life before, which I understand was hard and difficult for most people.

Despite all the heartbreak and hardship of War, I believe we were very fortunate in this part of the country, as the nearest bomb dropped was in the corner of a wood, about a mile from our home. This became a Sunday afternoon walk for locals to see the crater it caused, no doubt it was intended for the factories in Worcester.

Though life has seen it's ups and downs over the years, I consider myself very fortunate, despite lapses in health at time I remain a thankful survivor and humble pensioner.

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