大象传媒

I was born on the 9th December 1937 at No.2 Western Heights, Dover, Kent and was baptised at the Garrison Church in Portsmouth. This church was bombed during the 2nd World War. We were bombed out in Portsmouth and we were sent to Weymouth, Dorset. We lost all our possessions when Weymouth railway station was bombed during an air raid. First we lived in Melbury Rd, Weymouth and then moved to Radipole Ave, Weymouth. My sister Kathleen was born there in 1942, but we were both sent to Dr Barnardos at Adsdean House in Chichester, Sussex, where we stayed till 1943. I went to West Adding school for 2 terms.

Our Father was in the Army and away, and during the war our mother joined the Army Military Police. In 1943, my sister and I were evacuated to Thetford, Norfolk where we were boarded, not together but in separate houses. I was sent to a Mr and Mrs Liveridge and lived at Field Barn Farm, Kilverston, Thetford, Norfolk which was a part of Lord Fisher's Estate. He was the Admiral who ordered the convoy PQ18 to disperse on its way to Russia, as it was believed that the German battleship was nearby in the Baltic Sea at the time. I went to Thetford Primary School.

On a farm in the holiday times there was always something happening; harvest time, riding the horses from field to field to the threshing machine, also the job of clearing the chaff away, riding the horse when ploughing time and also chasing after the rabbits to send them back into the middle of the field, so they had no more cover, ready for the big breakout of rabbits for the farm hands to shoot at the end. We would collect them afterwards so they could be divided between the field hands, as a share, as there was rationing at the time and this was extra meat for the table. There was also asparagus grown on the farm.

As we were near to the Mildenhall area we were able to watch the aeroplanes, and nearer D.Day we would watch a German plane come over each day and two Spitfires would chase it, firing at it, but did not seem to hit it. We were always disappointed at the time and later we learnt this was a part of the decoy to trick the Germans about the true landing places. Also we wondered about the tanks and all the stuff lined up in open spaces, and we discovered that these were dummies. We would also hunt for any shot down planes, but never found one, but we did find a cockpit cover and we used to make rings and crosses from it. Just down the road from us, there was an Italian P.O.W. camp and the prisoners worked in the fields. The camp is still there, but now it is a supply depot. I stayed here on this farm till December 1948, when I went back to Portsmouth to live with my father, as my parents had divorced by then. My father would have liked me to join the Army, but my grandfather joined me in the Navy when I was 15 and 3 months. I joined the R.N. at HMS Ganges as a boy seaman in 1953 on the Queen's Coronation Day, my brother Joe was in the Fleet Air Arm, and Len was in the Army. My sister Kathleen went to live with an auntie, and my other sister Lucy I have lost track of and this ends my life during the war.

I wonder if anyone else was at the same farm as me?

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