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A WW 11 Childhood in Amesbury

My name is David Todd. I was born in October 1939 in Amesbury. I remember that my father spent part of the war working for The Australian Comforts Fund which sent dried fruit and other things to England to supplement our meagre rations. As far as I know my father arranged the distribution of the fruit etc. from the first floor of Antrobus House in Salisbury Road, Amesbury.

Later he worked for the Ministry of Food distributing orange juice, cod liver oil and National Dried Egg to pregnant women from an office opposite the garage in High Street Amesbury. I used to spend some time there with him, I remember looking at a book of cartoons, one of which stuck in my mind, it showed carol singers singing 鈥淏rightly shone the moon that night, though the frost was cruel, extra brightly just to spite, the Minister of Fuoooel!鈥�

Father was a voluntary retained fireman 鈥� no full time men in those days. We had a fire call out bell in our house at the foot of the stairs. The bell would ring at all times of the day or night and father would rush off to the Fire Station then at the bottom of Edwards Road, sometimes as far as Bristol after a bombing raid there. Local people had a great deal of time for the Fire Brigade. The owners of the Queensbury Hotel in Salisbury Street invited them to come and pick all the pears for themselves every year from a tree behind the hotel.

When the war was over I went to a party at Boscombe Down and I recall being given a windmill made of thin brown paxolin(?) Another celebratory event was held in the grounds of Amesbury Abbey when I went for a trip up and down a stretch of the Avon in a rowing boat crewed by about six soldiers. It poured with rain, I can see them now in their waterproof capes, I was drenched, caught scarlet fever and ended up in the Isolation Hospital at Old Sarum where I was given an injection from a syringe which was about eight inches long with a needle to match!

In the 1950鈥檚 rationing ended and on a certain Sunday there was a queue to buy off ration sweets at Pethen鈥檚 the newagent and I believe it was the following day that we had our first taste of doughnuts from Noyce鈥檚 the baker.

I was struck with a sense of d茅j脿 vu recently when I saw a friend of mine walking down the road dressed in light blue clothing with his arm in a sling. It reminded me of the 鈥渨alking wounded鈥� soldiers we used to see during the war, in their walking out uniform of light blue with a red tie.

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