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This story has been written onto the ´óÏó´«Ã½ People's War site by CSV Storygatherer, Pam McCarthy, on behalf of Bernard Peters. They fully understand the terms and conditions of the site.

Suddenly the river Fal was open to us again. Also Boscawen Park. Gradually the beaches were cleared of mines - at Perranporth by the Fire Brigade, using their hoses to sweep the mined areas, the force of the jet exploding them; the steel scaffolding poles along the beach at Pendower dismantled. Prior to that we had to negociate barbed wire and steel to get a swim. Visitors could return and use the Nare Head Hotel. The French minesweeper ‘La Suippe’ sunk by the German bombs, was available to play on at low tide.

The Yanks didn’t take everything with them. Various tools and steel mesh sheets left on the mud, petrol jerry cans came in handy, they were different to ours, bigger and better (we had several to use on Furniss’s Island). I was the proud possessor of a 3 tonner insignia; ie the large metal sign from a GMC lorry wing. It was in the shape of the American eagle with wings out-stretched, its head like a pointed rocket. The best part of it was the rocket length which had red studs along it, glass studs like our road ‘cat’s eyes’ , obviously road traffic reflectors. I wish I had it now. The Cornish mine shafts took unwanted equipment: damaged bicycles and good ones, ox-acetyline blow-pipes, oxygen bottles, welding equipment, propane bottles, and valuable expensive brass gauges, pressure gauges. These along with oiler cups became collectors items in the 1970s. Some were found left in the mud, some were retrieved from pits and shafts. To go down old shafts or tunnels is forbidden, but was done. Most have been capped, but if you know where to go some are still accessible (although highly dangerous). As time went by surplus war stock, especially jeeps, command cars, Hillman Utilities, GMC lorries, petrol cans and associated gear went on sale at Ministry of Supplies auctions. Vast amounts ended up in Army & Navy shops.

Whilst collecting old machinery and scrap from Wadebridge, from what was a farm used by the Truro Cathedral School as a wartime harvest camp, where the American troops had set up an army camps, I was able to see the US latrines. With the Yanks gone they were defunct, but the duck boards were there and the seating arrangement, a curved set of a dozen toilet apertures, cut in a long board over a long trench. The trench was a heaving mass of maggots. I’d never seen anything like that before. Since those years the Comprehensive School has been built over the site.

An unsung hero of the war has just died at the age of 90. An unsung hero because of secrecy.; the efforts of him and his brother went largely unrecognised (but Lord Mountbattern knew). Using skill and ingenuity they constructed PLUTO - the Pipeline Under the Ocean, a total of 492 nautical miles, which supplied fuel to the Allied forces for and after D Day to Cherbourg, Normandy. I have been to the fishing port of Port-en-Bassin 7 times and that is where PLUTO came ashore. Brigadier George Young died in March aged 92; 60 years ago in June 1944 he landed in Normandy, where he and his unit, RAVC requisitioned farm horses and carts to assist in the movement of vital supplies.

After the American GI’s left Cornwall the County woke up. Prior to the 1940s we here were known to be 50 years behind the times. A time when there were no cinemas opened on a Sunday, pubs had limited hours (‘Time’ was called at 10 o’clock). The only thing to do on a Sunday was Sunday School. Schoolboys wore caps, and on meeting someone we knew, would lift the cap, or touch its peak. As for eating a bag of chips in the street, you just didn’t do it. Toilet paper was the West Briton newspaper; many, many homes only had earth closets. Then in 1943 the ‘New World’ arrived - jazz and jitterbugs, cigars and chewing gum. Units of the Free French arrived and hundreds of evacuees from London. Cornwall came out of the Edwardian world as the rest of England discovered our lovely county. The evacuees returned with their parents to say ‘thank you’ to those who had billeted them, and little by little the Londoners moved down here. We Cornish were not entrepreneurs, not into making money, but the newcomers were. Sweet shops, tobacco and newspaper shops increased; run by Yorkshire folk and Londoners. Often those evacuees no longer children. The Cornish character was summed up by an old fisherman in Port Isaac when some visitors on a Sunday asked him, ‘Its so quiet. Whatever do you do? There’s just nothing to do.’ the old salt said, ‘Thas ‘zackly ow we like it.’

Amongst the evacuees were the ‘Paulines’ the choirboys of St Paul’s Cathedral, London. They were at school with us and taught us new tricks (more later). Other evacuees were Polish, Strauss and Pollack stayed at Baldhu church vicarage with the Rev Simmcock. They worked with us, helping with the harvest. There were Lithuanians, different Europeans, refugees from the war. Prisoners of War, POWs, worked on the farms, alongside of the Woman’s Land Army. There were Italian prisoners and German, and to differentiate they had coloured circles on their backs, yellow or blue. They were glad to be here; friendly, artisans and academics, with European wisdom new to us Cornish. I remember them helping my uncle and I to load and unload scrap iron for the war effort. Some of them were craftsmen. In St Michael Penkevil church can be seen a lovely wooden lectern carved by them. Out of tin and aluminium they produced cigarette lighters and decorated cigarette cases, much sought after. They would take two old pennies, soldering then to both ends of a piece of pipe, inserting a little tube and wick, they you had a lighter.

Since Cornwall has been seen by the modern world we Cornish are now in the minority as a race.

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