大象传媒

This story was submitted to the people war Website by a volunteer from Tiverton Museum of Mid Devon Life on behalf of Edward Geoge Pittman.

My first memory of the war starts in 1939 at the age of nearly 7 years of age.
I was originally evacuated to Chichester, but my parents came and took us back to London, this must have been the phoney war.

My 2 sisters, who were older than me, were put onto a London bus and with other children from my school; I was taken to the station and put on a train.

I can remember all the mothers crying before we left. We didn鈥檛 know where we were going and we were not too worried because it was a bit of an adventure. When the train stopped it was at the Old Bow Station. Then we were taken to Bow high street. I remember seeing some soldiers in some kind of hall, practising morse code. I was very intrigued about this, and then someone came to us and told us to go with her, who was the Billeting Officer at the time. She took us to the farm and it was all different to me, coming from a London town Wandsworth. We were introduced into a life which we had never seen before such as cows. We would do various things on the farm, go and feed the chickens, which pecked at my legs to get the feed. Then one night we heard this plane coming over and it was a German plane which dropped a bomb in a field and made a large hole. While we were there, the farmer died, which was very sad. We used to go further down the road to some people called the Webbers, who made cream to go on bread with jam on top, which was nice. I can still taste the strawberry jam. We used to go to the local chapel and my sister would read the text to me because I could not ready very well, to remember it. Some mornings, on the way to school, we would get a lift on the back of a milk lorry and we would hold on to the milk churns. One morning the lorry went into a ditch, no one was hurt, but that was the last time we went on the lorry.

With regards to the aircraft that crashed on the golf course it was a Blenheim bomber. We wee not allowed to go near it. It was said that we could not go near it as they said there was a secret device on it. When it was taken away it had left its shape deep in the soil.

The billeting officer was called 鈥淭he Hockey Family鈥�. I stayed about a year and a bit there. My wife and I still are in touch with Devon as our daughter Angela lives in Crediton and has two children now. We were back in London when the 鈥榙oodle bugs鈥� and 鈥榬ockets鈥� were being sent over.

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