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This story has been written onto the ´óÏó´«Ã½ People’s War site by Cornwall CSV Storygatherer, Martine Knight, on behalf of Dorothy Pentreath. Her story was given to the Trebah WW2 Video Archive, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund in 2004. The Trebah Garden Trust understands the terms and conditions of the site.

Being a child in the Isles of Scilly, during the war, was exciting with all the ships and flying boats coming and going, even if it was a worrying time for my parents.
As children, my contemporaries and I didn’t realise how dangerous war could be. One day the air raids had gone on all day so when the ‘all clear’ sounded all the local children went onto the beach to play. Suddenly a huge black plane, which I later learnt was a Dornier, appeared across the bay and fired on us children as they played. We all ran and our parents dragged them inside the houses. Luckily no one was hit.
One of my parents’ friends was in their yard, with her daughter and a friend, during a bombing raid. The daughter, who was also called Dorothy, pushed her mother and the friend out of the way as the bomb fell and a large water tank fell on her, killing her instantly. The mother later gave me a gold ring that Dorothy wore, as a momento.

My family used their basement as a shelter and one night, when the siren went, my sister got up and walked all the way to the shelter without waking up.

One of our teachers used to climb on the roof and flash a torch when the German bombers came. One day she was taken off on the Scillonian. It was said that she was a spy, but I thinks she might just have been ‘nutty as a fruit cake’ because she was odd.

Sometimes, instead of crossing to the mainland by Scillonian 1 - on which my mother was always seasick, they flew on the 8-seater Rapide to St.Just.
The one exception to mother’s seasickness was when the ship was full of 400 soldiers and she wouldn’t be sick in front of them!
One of the Rapides disappeared on a flight whilst carrying a local family. There was much speculation as to what had happened to it. Many years later a German pilot visited the islands and said that he had shot the plane down and had sent a radio message saying so. Unfortunately, the message was never received.

Locals had plans as to where they would go or what they would do if the Germans invaded. Some planned to go to the off islands and live in caves.

Quite a lot of French refugees arrived in fishing boats. One of them gave me a ship’s biscuit, which I took home. Mother forbade me to eat it in case it was booby-trapped. I held out for several weeks, but in the end gave in to hunger and ate it. I then spent the next two weeks worrying I might blow up!

Citrus fruit was in very short supply and one day an invasion barge came ashore on Porthmellin Beach. We children went to have a look and the men on board started throwing oranges to us. In later years I thought I may have imagined this, but the island’s headmaster had recorded it in his journal so it was true.

One Christmas Mother invited four soldiers for the day and told them to come at whatever time they liked. They arrived at 8 a.m. for breakfast and stayed all day!

Some Canadian soldiers wrote in my autograph book. One, William Osmond Anderson from Saskatchewan, wrote this poem, dated May 8th 1943:-

Memories

Only a man harrowing clods
With slow, silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they walk
Only thin flame without smoke
From the heaps of couch grass
Yet this will go on with the same
Though dynasties pass
Yonder, a maid and her white
Go whispering by
Wars and all will fade into night
‘Ere their story die

I have often wondered what happened to him.

VIDEO DETAILS HELSTON 06:42:00 — 07:26:50

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