大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Jane Hearn on behalf of Danny Allen and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was six months old when the war started, my family were hop-picking at the time and didn't return for six years. Being just outside of Ashford, there was the drone of planes especially at night, barrage balloons going down in flames and shrapnel falling from the skies. Later on, in the village, where the windows had been blown out, they had been covered with a primitive plastic green and white matting. I can remember the guns, at the back of Pluckley station, opening up and trying to bring the doodlebugs (V1's) down.
When I was about 3 or 4 I used to think that the searchlights were solid, and that someone came to clean them. Next door to our house was a transit camp for soldiers before they were posted abroad, one of them left a little cork gun with us. At Surrenden, near to Little Chart, there was a large Army camp; they had a temporary cinema there which civilians could use. There were black American troops there too, I think. Some of my relatives stayed there too, my whole family used to come from Hackney every year for hop picking and we stayed and picked fruit, and did general farmwork, for the duration of the war.
My Dad worked as a stoker in a power station in London and used to visit us at the weekends, sometimes he would bring us home-made toys. Cheese was made from sour milk, hung up in a rag from a hook in the ceiling or an indoor washing line. Most of the property around Pluckley had no electricity, but had oil lamps and the toilets were in the back yard, and we had an Anderson shelter that always seemed to be flooded. The house where we lived is just one house, but during the war it housed three families; the Pyles, Allens and Butlers. I attended school, Pluckley Church of England,The milkman also used to come along on a tricycle, he had measuring cans on sticks for 1 pint and half pint measures, because people used to collect their milk in jugs.
Accumulators for radios (or wirelesses as they were called then) had to be taken to a garage for re-charging, in that time Pluckley had a forge, a good bakery, two general stores and of course two pubs, one in the village square and one at Pluckley Thorn; the Black Horse and The Blacksmith's Arms. There was another pub by Pluckley station, The Deering Arms. Quite a lot of Londoners were there, some like us there because of the work and there was a German family living on Pluckley Hill.
Occasionally unexploded bombs and shells lay about on the ground. 'What were the little white fires?' I used to ask my mum, she replied that they were incendiary bombs.
Winters always seemed to be cold, always frost on the windows. The biggest disappointment I had was picking up glow-worms and getting them back home I found that they were just beetles!
It would be nice for either Pluckley people or Londoners who were there to actually add to the Pluckley story.

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