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49 - Peter Summerton was born in West Street, Stratford, in 1940:

"I remember little stories. I remember that we had the American Police, American MP’s staying with us. And little stories I vaguely remember them supplying us all with sweets and chewing gum and so we never went without anything like that.
The stories I remember are the stories that my brother and my father told me what was happening through the war because the house must have been absolutely full, as nearly all they were down the street because we had got cousins staying here, we had land army girls in the front room - I know dad was quite concerned about that, well mother was more concerned than father because of the front window opening all the time and the chaps coming in and going out, so mum soon put a stop to that!

So after that we had a Belgian couple staying with us, Mr. and Mrs. Landier from what I can remember the name, and they were with us for quite a while. And cousins from Birmingham came here, so the house must have been absolutely full, but the American police were the thing, they had got the back bedroom and I remember dad telling me one day his bike was in the hall there, and the chap came out of his bedroom and went into the toilet and instead of turning right he turned left and fell all the way down the stairs onto dad’s bike! So that was another incident.
And of course my brother being 10 years older than me, he was very interested in the war of course, he would be 14 then, they’d kept …, where there was a plane crash, they’d kept something for him so apparently we had a cellar full of all odd parts from B 17’s and all the rest of it, so mom was not happy about this at all but my brother was, so we had quite a collection.
My brother would go over to Honeybourne where they had got cold storage there, and once a month they fetched the meat ration for the people. Apparently what would happen, they would supply the food for the American police that were here, we had two at a time, and so again we didn’t have to worry about too much about food, I think we fed quite well.

As I also remember father saying that we had got some good tins of fruit cocktail in the cellar, well you couldn’t get that, that was illegal, and he was absolutely terrified that we were going to get caught out. We never did of course, ‘cos it was all legal, but he was …, I mean he was in the Home Guard so he would be working all day, come home, and change and off again.
He was based just here, past here in the drill hall. So he was a sergeant, most of the First World War veterans were promoted sergeant because they had had war experience in the forces. Yes he was in the back there and they were off all over the place; I still remember him coming back through the back, ‘cos our back way leads to the drill hall, and he’d come through in his uniform and my brother and I had dug a great big hole, I remember that it was not very big but it was as tall as I was right at the bottom of it, dug as an air raid shelter I think. Our cellar became the air raid shelter.
Father was saying that one night they were guarding the water pumping station up on the Warwick Road and a German bomber was being chased away from …, must have been Birmingham or Coventry flew over and one of the guards wanted to take a pot shot at it, well they’ve only got one bullet, they were only allowed one bullet each so the paperwork wasn’t worth the effort ‘cos they’d never have hit it, but … I know that Stratford got bombed on a few occasions, but they were just jettisoned up the Clopton Road and Birmingham Road area.

There was a time that I had got chicken pox and two of the MPs, wanted to …, they spent the night in the room with me hoping that they were going to catch it so they wouldn’t get posted abroad you see! Well by then D day had happened, and there was no need for them in the town then. All the Americans had moved out, so …, yes, so unfortunately they didn’t catch it! So their effort was wasted, and they had to go abroad in the end anyway.
We built up, or mom and dad built up a lot of relations with the Americans and I have got photographs of us in the garden with the tent, they sent two at a time, they’d do their tour of duty and they’d move off, photographs of dad, always in his uniform, so he must have lived in his uniform when he wasn’t at work. He was a carpenter same as me. Carpenter and joiner, and they biked to Coventry to do the repairs on the blitz of Coventry, him and his boss, well he worked with him which was D. J. Dyer which is an old local firm which I did my apprenticeship with, on the Tiddington Road. Yes they’d bike everywhere in those days, and they’d come back and do a night on duty which was absolutely phenomenal, thinking about it, and never moan about it.

He came home …, he was telling me that he came home one night because he was a founder member of the British Legion as well, so he would go to the club over there, come back one night in the blackout and it was black and walked straight into a lamp post, his tin helmet flew off, rolled across the floor, couldn’t find it! He was on his hands and knees trying to find his tin helmet ‘cos it was pitch black, anyway he eventually found it and made his way home, those are some of the funny things.
There was a captain in charge of them, Captain West I think his name was, and he was a big portly gentleman and when he lay on the ground, he couldn’t get to aim his rifle because of his tummy, so he had to do a lot of kneeling and squatting I think to do his shooting.
But right across the board the age group, you had got young ones and old ones. Dad would have been, what, he would be about 40 I think in the Second World war when he was in the Home Guard, because mother didn’t have me till she was 40, so that … I have been here just over 65 years now.

I did an apprenticeship and I got deferred for the first two years because of my apprenticeship, and then after 2 years it was disbanded anyway so it wasn’t done so I didn’t actually go. I would have gone at 21 instead of 18 because of my apprenticeship, but if I’d have gone it would have changed my life, because during that time I met my wife Val, we got married, so I was married at 22, so that probably wouldn’t have happened, and lived here ever since.

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