大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Jenny Ford on the behalf of Mr. Alan Evans and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

At the top of Days Lane on the Bromham Road was a house that is no longer there, where Biddenham's first bombs were dropped. These fell in the garden and blew over a tree. A branch is supposed to have knocked the front door as it fell and the gentleman living there answered the knock as you would for a normal caller to the house. These were small explosive incendiary bombs and did no other damage. Would Hitler have been annoyed to know that was the only response he got for his efforts!

Now to Days Lane itself. It was never a pleasant prospect to travel up walking or on a bicycle as the road was not made up and potholes and deep puddles seemed to be there all the time, and in the blackout you could get very wet feet.

Steve Whitaker with his wife and son Keith. Keith was a friend of mine and Steve was the main percussion player for the 大象传媒 Symphony Orchestra that was evacuated to Bedford for the war. His colleague, Paul Beard the leader of the Orchestra, lived at that time with wife, son and daughter Pauline in 'Marigolds', the house that Fred Rawlings moved from into Church Farm.

There was also Reg Toothill with wife Ruth and new baby girl. The Toothills, very well known furniture makers in Yorkshire, also for a time lived in Days Lane. Reg was very casual but he was in fact Squadron Leader Toothill of 'Pathfinder' fame. He had a bright red Morris 8 and drove it as if he was flying an RAF plane. He took me to Whipsnade Zoo once day and due to the lack of traffic on the roads in those war days we have done 80 mph there and back. He was posted on and I hope he lasted the war out if he wasn't killed on the road!

Turning left out of Biddenham, turn onto the Bromham Road there were only fields between the last house in Biddenham Turn (now gone) and the top of Days Lane. Later the Observer Corps building was built on the corner of Days Lane, and when this was opened by the Duke of Gloucester everyone was surprised to see that he was wearing make up.

On the right of the Bromham Road, up to the Golf course entrance, was just fields. 'Beggar's Roost' was built much later. This was thought not a very nice name for a brand new house by most people. Then came on the right two houses. Mr. and Mrs. Fred Ambridge and son Douglas in one. Douglas was at school at the same time as me but was older. He always wanted to go into the army from school and went to Sandhurst upon leaving school and finished the war, I think, as the youngest Colonel in the army. Doug married Ruby Marshall of the farming family on the Bedford to Great Barford Road. It was on this farm that the first bombs were dropped in the Bedford area. People went in hundreds to see the bomb craters and to this day they can still be seen marked by rings of trees. There are, I think, four craters marked with trees, and as German bombs were at that time dropped in sticks of five, where is the missing one after over sixty years?
There were many rabbit warrens, and on the evening before VE Day with Dick Holland I shot my first and only rabbit. I am not pround of that. Mr. Treerise kept his cows in the Baulk fields. I used to take them and bring them back, hoping there would be no army convoys of tanks on the main road. The cows really went straight there and came back on their own to their own stalls in the cowshed. I just walked behind doing nothing.

Mentioning tanks, one went off the road through the stonework of Bromham Bridge and ended upside down in a field. Great excitement for us lads to see the underneath of a tank.

The Green did not have a seat until one was placed at the end of the Causeway next to Mrs. Shorley's cottage in 1937/38 in memory of Clara Street who always felt there should be a seat for people waiting for the bus. Later in 1939 I sat here with friends one afternoon and watched the buses from Bedford bringing the London evacuees.

The Causeway in our family was nicknamed 'Shirley's Walk' because of an evacuee who wanted to see sheep, and the one and only time there were sheep in Biddenham, they were in that field for a very short time and she would walk that way to see them.

Before we had ever heard of 'time capsules' she and I buried in 1941 in the Causeway a cigar box, thinking that someone would dig it up one day in the distant future. In it, I remember, was the 'Beano' comic of the week, the 'Sunny Stories' of the week, some coloured glass beads, different sized buttons and a Players cigarette packet. We (at eleven) did not think of the box disintegrating after a time, so the point of the exercise was lost.

Over the Bridge was Bromham Mill. This was the home of my friend, John Church and his older sister, Pam. Mrs. Church was a Miss Quenby. We had great parties at the Mill and they always included a treasure hunt around the Mill. When John was evacuated to Canada during the war, I lost a good friend but my dad bought John's bike for me. I had moved up a size. During the war you always had second hand bikes as you grew. Between the age of seven and twenty-six I only had two new bikes.

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