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Name Mr John Amos
Interview Date 6th May 2005
Subjects covered Bombs, Morse Code listener, Keeping pigs, Rationing, Military Presence (P.O.W.s and Bombs)
Location Oxford, Kidlington, Stanton Harcourt
People Included Howard Long

This is an edited extract of a recorded interview conducted by Museum of Oxford with Mr John Amos. It has been submitted to the People’s War website with her permission. A full version of the interview transcript and audio recording will be available at the Centre for Oxfordshire Studies.

Defending the City
The Germans did bomb us at Kidlington a couple of times thing that strikes me most that I can remember about that one Sunday afternoon after lunch going into the kitchen to make tea for my parents heard an aircraft and you know if you didn't look at the aircraft an identify it you weren't anybody in those days you had to know all your aircraft and I'd very low and I just looked out of the kitchen window and looked up and it was a Heinkel 111 it was so low I could see the markings on the aircraft and I could actually see the man squatting in the the the gun position at the bomb aimers position at the front of the aircraft as it went over I went in and told my parents they didn't believe me and within a few seconds there was a thump thump thump thump the bombs they then believed me …

I'll tell you a little story not concerning myself but concerning a chap called Howard Long now he was a paraplegic and he lived over at Stanton Harcourt and he was also a very keen radio amateur or radio experimenter as they were called in those days during the war his he was near the airfield at Stanton Harcourt the government enlisted his aid as a listening post because he was disabled and could only just sit there and the R.A.F. station brought in the equipment and put his aerial up an what have you course it was a very risky thing because the Germans had landed he'd have been for it I'll tell you a bit more about that at the end but he devised a system of listening because when the messages are being sent out he would listen to the messages from Germany then he found that you could pick up the submarines on reciprical frequencies and he had a special pair of head phones made up he was so competent with because it was Morse all Morse you see and he could listen in each ear hear the message you know and he had a telephone in the house which was a direct line and he would get a call telling him when to listen and he would listen then he'd phone back whatever he had got…

GAP IN RECORDING

He was so affected

And the end of the war it was revealed that he was on one of Hitler’s death lists .

Digging for Victory

…we had a system my next door neighbours they kept two pigs you were allowed to have two pigs you were allowed to have two pigs and we did it on share basis Tom Williams next door neighbour kept the pigs he had a pig sty at the far end and one pig was for the government the other you could have yourself and because we saved all our kitchen waste and stuff we contributed to the feeding of it and father helped out with the cost of food so we we'd have fresh bacon at the slaughter time when the pigs were killed and then he'd start off again with some more pigs so yes food was difficult but it wasn't as bad as it was for the towns people because you had more land and we had a huge garden and we were living at the top of Elms Lane in those days everybody grew their own land and a lot of people had chickens so you know you swapped about and vegetables for chickens so we weren't affected too much by the rationing if you kept over so many chickens then you had to give your eggs to the to the government but the odd few chickens were done on the bartering basis I suppose it might have been illegal but it went on and there wasn't much the government could do about it really .

Rationing
We really hadn't got into freeze drying eggs powdered eggs as you said until the during the war they started to bring in these car wax cartons of eggs they were they were restricted and they used to mark your ration book if you'd had one there was no allocation to stop people getting take your ration book and they'd mark on that you had one on such a such a day but there was sufficient powdered egg in there to last you a month wasn't there [I used to love powdered egg] we used to make the most fantastic scrambled egges [fritters oh I loved it] absolutely incredible stuff [yeah I loved it] can't get it anymore not like that anyway that was American wasn't it [yeah it was good] you think that they they'd taken the trouble to bring that all the way across the Atlantic you had no idea how much danger been involved and just just for us to eat that

There used to be a station at Kidlington …adjacent to the station was a large bacon factory and you could get bacon off cuts and miss shapes … pieces of meat that would not normally be sold off for rashers and that sort of thing you were allowed to buy that but it is queueing up for it was it was difficult during the war meat if I can remember correctly I spent many hours queuing for meat first thing in the morning before I went to school …mother had a fall towards the end of the war and she hurt her knees and ever after that I used to be down to the butchers to queue for what ever meat was available liver (you had to queue for everything those days) yeah offal was some offal was not restricted it wasn't on coupons and you'd go there for it the better meats you see liver full of iron and people didn't always want to buy that and you could go there and queue up there and get it so yeah we didn't do too badly on meat.

Military Presence
We course we saw many of the Prisoners of War they were employed on the agriculture side in and around Kidlington Germans and Italians but mainly Italians the Italians were most free to go anywhere an you could invite Italians into your home with permission but of course you couldn't fraternise with the Germans they were always with armed guard.

When the war was coming to its conclusion and we were bombing Germany it was very dramatic to watch of an evening the thousands of aircraft flying round and round building up into formation over Kidlington going round and round until until they got into formation and then they would you know fly off to do the raid.

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