大象传媒

This story is submitted by a volunteer on behalf of Radio Bristol Action Desk at City of Bristol College.

Food
Food parcels were of great importance, tins were kept for Chirstmas as a special treat.
A tin of sausage meat from America had sausage meat surrounded by lard. This was used to make pastry for a meat pie. Like a pork pie. With the help from the influx of spam as well.
Jelly was made with fizzy lemonade of various colours eg cherryade, dandelion and burdock etc and gelatine.

Shelter and War experience
Our shelter had electric lights, which we were lucky to have. Dad installed them before he went into the Navy.

Decoys were lit in Nailsea to distract the opposition and as a result some bombs were dropped on the outside of Nailsea.

Memories of childhood
Fenchay hospital was the hospital for the Americans - the American field hospital. This meant that we could get chewing gum "Got any gum chum?" The phrase of the kids.
Tynsfield in Wraxall was also an American hospital put there before D-Day.
In Nailsea a company were stationed with the job of making smoke. Everything seemed to dissapear over night on D-Day.

I remeber visiting my Grandfather in Wraxall, and he lived on the top of a valley. I witnessed a German plane flying through the valley seemingly lower than me.
A plane on training lost height and crashed in the west end of Nailsea. Unfortunatly the crew didn't survive.

I was at guide camp at Porlock and we weren't aware that the war had ended unitl we got back to Taunton Station. When camping with Scouts, tents were erected under trees so that they woudln't be seen.

Fundraising fetes
In fancy dress I dressed up as Hitler, for VJ I dressed up as a Japanese with my brother as John Bull.

Blackouts
The blackouts didn't stop everyday life or doing what we wanted to do.
To deliver milk in Nailsea, it was done twice daily because there were no fridges so Morning and Afternoon. There were no bottles and so it was carried around and poured into family's jugs.
It was rare for a night cloudy so that you couldn't see anything, the stars often were enough to make it light. The last time I saw stars like I did in the war was on the Quantock.

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