大象传媒

This contribution to People鈥檚 War was received by the Action Desk at 大象传媒 Radio Norfolk and submitted to the website with the permission and on behalf of Mr Brian Stannard
I was nearly ten when war was declared in Sept 1939. That was in Chelmesford. Within weeks I remember a German Heinkel bomber being shot down over the town and crashing in the Bishop鈥檚 garden. We cycled out to gaze at the remains.

Soon soldiers were billeted on us, three or four of them. We had the space as I was an only child. They taught me to play darts. The dining room door on which the board hung had a few dart holes!

My father had been a plumber and, of course, the building trade collapsed very quickly, so he got a job on permanent night shift at Hoffman鈥檚 ball bearing factory, one of the three large employers in the town, he hated it. Ball bearings were essential for weapons construction.

Then came the blitz and at school trying to continue lessons in the air-raid shelters. As there were two classes in one shelter, this was not a great success. Imagine French at one end and maths at the other!

One night, during a German air raid, there was an almighty bang, but strangely no damage, not even broken windows. Then came a knock at the door, 鈥淕et out quickly to the pub at the other end of the street, there鈥檚 an unexploded bomb nearby鈥�. So my mother and I spent the rest of the night, with lots of other people, in the pub. When my dad came home from the factory he wondered why everyone had vanished!

Next, the Americans arrived in 1942 and set about building several air bases in the area in a remarkably short time. We had never seen such awesome trucks and earth-moving equipment. My friend and I cycled out into the countryside one winters afternoon to see all this frenetic activity. The lanes were inches deep in a sticky mixture of mud and concrete. Our bicycles gradually seized up and there we were, literally stuck. Fortunately an American truck took pity on us, otherwise we might still be there! Our shoes and bikes must have looked wonderful.

The nearest US base was at B鈥︹��, about four miles away, and twin-engined Marauders flew daylight raids, always in the afternoons. At weekends and in holidays we saw them go out and knew we had time to cycle out to see them return. There seemed to be no security. We could stand on the perimeter, which wasn鈥檛 even fenced, provided we didn鈥檛 venture too near the runway. To us lads, it was exciting to see planes with shell holes and damaged undercarriage trying to land. Of course, we didn鈥檛 know how many, if any, failed to come back.

One of my strongest and weirdest memories concerns, 鈥淗ow did I know D-Day had arrived before anyone else?鈥� As I鈥檝e said, the local American bombers always went on raids in the afternoons. On that morning, 6th June 1944 I was woken at 6am by the sound of planes. On looking out of the window, I saw the Marauders zooming around, getting into formation. I thought to myself, 鈥淲hy are they going out at this time of the morning, they never have before. There鈥檚 only one reason. It must be D-Day鈥�. Clever? Psychic? No, just a bit of simple logic!

Then, in the latter part of the conflict, these came, at least for me, a development more scary than the blitz 鈥� the V1 and V2 rockets. The V1 鈥淒oodlebug鈥� engine had such a distinctive sound (I can hear it in my mind now) but while you could hear it you were safe. The few seconds silence between the engine cutting out and the big explosion were truly frightening but at least they announced their coming which the V2 rockets, of course, did not. I suppose they were the first weapons of a new era of warfare, and very sinister, causing death and destruction with no warning at all. One of them killed an uncle of mine (the only relative I lost during the war). He was a supervisor at Hoffman鈥檚 factory, and as there had been an air-raid siren, he had ordered the women from his workshop into the shelter. As a responsibility leader, he was to be last into the shelter but too late. The women all survived, but he didn鈥檛.

I haven鈥檛 mentioned food rationing. None of us went hungry. There was no variety in our diet, but we had never enjoyed the variety we have nowadays. However a few highlights linger in the memory. For example, trying to make omelettes from powdered dried eggs, (a failure), the universal dislike of whale meat and my mother (who for some reason couldn鈥檛 stand wholemeal flour) spending hours sieving the flour through a silk stocking to remove the little bits of bran! Being a child, I was spared the worry of trying to put a meal together from meagre rations.

Then, suddenly it was over. Tindal Square, in the centre of Chelmesford was packed with people celebrating VE Day, and local dignitaries appeared on the balcony of the old Corn Exchange, and I was there in the middle of it all.

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