大象传媒

Dig for Victory.
One major ploy of the enemy was to starve the population and U boat attacks on the Merchant Fleet were horrendous. As elsewhere Cotmanhay had allotments on which we grew our own food. This was called the Dig for Victory Campaign. At the top of Wesley Street across to Ash Street were allotments. Just below where Truman Street joins Bridge Street was a shop and nearer the bridge an old Smithy (With all the Blacksmiths forge and bellows). Between the Smithy and the Laundry was a track leading to allotments which reached from behind the Bridge Inn to those reached from Richmond Avenue. These latter were bounded by Bennerley Rec. Most are now the schools playing field. Potatoes were a staple crop along with cabbage and peas, rhubarb, celery, lettuce, runner beans, black currants, leeks and one year my Dad grew something called sweet corn which everybody watched come to fruition - though it tasted nice it was eaten with some suspicion because we hadn鈥檛 a clue what it really was. Each year the mayor or some such character came to judge the efforts of men who worked, fire-watched, and Dug for Victory. Prizes I cannot recall but Dad had several red 1st prize cards and we got something to eat of course.
Various livestock had always been kept in the back gardens to provide eggs and a cockerel for Christmas - though the murder, feather plucking and disembowelment of one of my friends leaned me heavily towards vegetarianism at an early age! It is not that people were cruel necessity demanded it. We also had a pig but the end of her I leave to the imagination. Apart from some ancient fantail pigeons my favourites were Banties (Bantams). Each day I went to the top of the garden with my Mam to feed them in their wired run. On Wesley Street a telegraph post stood next to the first houses above Len James` garage. Wires from it crossed the end of our garden to a post in a garden of a house on Milton Street and from that post to one in Milton Street itself. I remember it was a bright sunny day and Mam was throwing feed to the black bantams strutting and clucking in their run. I cannot accurately describe the noise, a kind of scream combined with a monstrous roar and a German plane just cleared the top of the house, went overhead and out of sight over the houses in Wesley Street. Immediately afterwards was a high pitched screaming roar as a British fighter plane came after it. In my memory is the sound, the dark shapes, the panic stricken cackle of the bantams hurtling themselves upwards and my Mam clutching my shoulders. It was a moment of total and absolute terror in which we were powerless. Later Mam told Dad, Grandma and her brothers that both planes went beneath the telegraph wires and the bantams seemed to have reached as high as the planes. (I have gone cold and tearful writing this now 鈥攔ealisation as to what might have been I suppose.)

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