大象传媒

When war was declared on the Sunday morning I was living in a small village called Eaton near Tarporley and I was on the parish council. We didn't have evacuees for a little while but the first batch came up from London via Crewe station. There was an empty cottage in the village that was assigned for them to stay while we found them other accommodation. There were about 12 of them, mothers and babies. One lady looked about 70 and said that she'd had the baby in the 'change'but she must have looked older than she actually was. The whole village gave pots and pans and donated food, bags of potatoes and cabbages. The cottage had also been used to store food so there were lots of empty food crates so they were converted into baby cots lined with army blankets. All the women decided to stay together in the cottage, all 12 of them. Over a few months they found village life too quiet and gradually drifted back to London. When they started to bomb Liverpool in about 1943 we had another group of children evacuees accompanied by two teachers. The boys weren't used to the country life and killed some of the chickens.

Where we lived near Tarporley there is now a race track called Oulton Park, it was an army camp in the war with French sailors based there. The locals coudn't believe that they ate anything that moved! The French sailors were then followed by Polish soldiers who used to buy a pig and turn the whole lot into sausages. Then the Americans came with american stockings. My brothers who were farmers also helped to drain the land near Birchwood Warrington to build the american air base there. We also had a POW camp with Italian and German POWs who were assigned to work on the farms. One morning when I looked out of the window to see who had arrived it was a little man of about 50 with very dark hair and a moustache, I thought it was Hitler. We also had a young POW called Rudi who at 19 was very young, he still keeps in touch with my son and daughter in law.

I wanted to write my story and say how hard women worked in the fields and they did their bit for the country without medals. The WI groups were very strong and we all learned to make food go further, one of the favourite dishes was Duck'n taters which was potatoes dipped in buttermilk.We also learned how to make things for the home like rag rugs and slippers with sting soles.

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