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This story was submitted to the People's War site by the Dunstable At War Team on behalf of the author and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

One of my earliest memories of the war is being taken to Luton by my mum. She told me that we had to leave well before 5.00pm, as all the buses were classified as ‘workers priority’ and were often full up as they called at the factories before arriving in the town centre. I was also told to hold onto her hand very tightly when the bus came because everyone pushed forward and fought their way on, (no queues then).

Some of the older single-decker buses were converted to standee vehicles, i.e. seats were placed around the sides of the vehicles, facing inwards, to allow more standing room so that single-deckers could carry the same number of passengers as a double-decker bus. On the rare occasions we came home on the bus in the black-out there were no street lights. The blinds were pulled down over the windows at the front so you had to keep a sharp look out to see where you were. The interior lights had deep shades fitted making it very gloomy inside the vehicles at night. The conductors were provided with a little light in the ceiling, shining vertically downwards, also fitted with a deep shade, which could be pulled along so that fare collecting was made easier.

One Saturday afternoon my friends and I were playing on a grassy bank at the junction of Eaton Bray Road and Castle Hill Road in Totternhoe, when an Eastern National double-decker bus came from the direction of Stanbridge, (which they never did normally). It was filled with children, many leaning out of the window shouting, screaming and waving. Later at about tea-time, a village lady came knocking on the door with a little boy in tow. She told my mum that she had to take the boy in. He was an evacuee. Mum said we had no room in our small two up, two down cottage, with Mum, Dad and us three boys. After an argument with the lady, Mum gave in on the understanding that he only stayed until another house could be found. He actually stayed with us for several months before returning to London.

The older boys and girls who had moved up to Britain Street School in Dunstable came back to Totternhoe School for their final summer term, to ease congestion in Dunstable Schools. Many children evacuated from London schools had moved to Dunstable. The Ackland schoolchildren were based at Britain Street. These older children were often sent unsupervised on to the Knolls for walks in fine weather. For our safety we had to practise evacuation from the school in case of air raids. Miss B, herself a refugee from Jersey, would read to us in the afternoon as we sat around under a tree in the school playing field. The weather always seemed to be fine in the summer.

A Spitfire landed in the field near the Cricket Club; armed sentries were posted to guard it. A Blenheim bomber ran out of fuel and landed in Costin’s field by the road to Eaton Bray. Two bombs dropped in the road near the memorial Hall creating large craters which closed the road. An oil bomb dropped in fields between Totternhoe and Billington. It made a huge bang. I remember my two brothers and I were in bed and it seemed in two seconds flat we were downstairs with our parents who were still up.

My Dad worked from 6am-6pm Monday to Friday and 6am-4pm Saturday and Sunday at the Totternhoe Lime Company. As a lime burner on the kilns he was in a reserved occupation. In addition we had a large garden and two allotments down Stanbridge Road at Ditchlong. We boys helped with the digging in spring and picking potatoes in the autumn. Dad kept a lot of rabbits which were killed to make pies and stews. We boys had to fill 2 sacks of food which we picked up on the Knolls for the rabbits each day after school and before tea in the spring, summer and autumn. Many people took allotments to ‘Dig for Victory’, which was a slogan in the war, although they knew very little about vegetable growing and would ask the seasoned gardeners for help. On summer evenings later in the war, as we toiled on the allotment, the sky was often filled with bombers going over. I can remember my Dad taking me to the look-out post when he was fire-watching and showing me the glow over Dunstable Downs as London burned.

Some village boys like me, got jobs helping with the harvest. I used to lead the loaded horse and carts from the field to the farmyard. Bigger boys pitched sheaves on to the carts. Later when the threshing machine came, wire netting was put on posts a little distance from the ricks being thrashed. It was put all round us boys who were given sticks; the farmer’s terrier dog was also put inside the netting. Our job was to kill the rats. We also went stoking — putting the sheaves of corn into stooks to dry as they came off the binder.

We had army manoeuvres — long convoys of vehicles going slowly by with soldiers crouching down round the back of our house and in the garden. Army despatch riders came to train on the Knolls with their instructor. Anti-tank gunners came to practise in the quarry. The engine shed for the narrow gauge railway was in the middle of the quarry with the track of a falling gradient leading away. A winch was placed in the shed and a target was rigged up on the chassis of a wagon so that the target moved for the guns to aim at, the shells thudding into the quarry face. There were reports of ricochets into the village.

Later, Italian POWs came to clean out the brook; they coked a potato pie and gave us some, and when we got home we couldn’t eat our dinner. Mum was not impressed. These POWs worked at the Lime Works and with the threshing machine. Later, German POWs did much the same. Land Girls also helped out on the farms, some even living in.

Ivinghoe Beacon was used during the war for firing ranges and gun practice. Some boys from Eaton Bray went there shrapnel collecting. While waiting for the bus home a live round they had collected exploded, severely injuring some of them.

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