大象传媒

My dear late dad 'mostyn webber' often amused our family over sunday lunch with tales about the Yanks up on the hill ! They farmed at Hindon Fm.(Cousin still does)he was a lad of about 14 with five other brothers,His dad had the contract to collect the swill from the American NAFI on North Hill where they were busy training hundreds of GIs to drive Sherman Tanks (much of the concrete roads ,loading bays etc can still be seen today)This they fed to their pigs,The NAFI was run by black soldiers,whom not being allowed to go to town as often as the white soldiers, struck up a deal with my grandfather, they would hide tins of food in the full swill bins and on return he would hide gallons of scrumpy in the bottom of the stacked empties thus ensuring a steady supply of booze for the guys , a serious offence if caught out !! the tins found their way on to the underground market ! As petrol was severly rationed , grandad would invite groups of officers to the farm to drink scrumpy ,whilst they were in the cider barn getting drunk the boys would syphon petrol out of the jeeps leaving just enough for them to get back to their billets in Minehead 2 miles down the road being heavily intoxicated they were non the wiser! As for the ill gotten petrol this was used to run a chevrolet car that grandad had bought from the Americans 'on the cheap' with the back cut off and wooden boards fixed in place it made an excelant pick up truck American style,much to the wonderment of the other local farmers. My dad loved the American soldiers ,they always drove by shouting out 'hey kid want some gum' then gave out lots of Gum and sweets. Once while in Minehead he witnessed an all out brawl in a pub called Haywards bars (now shops)he said it was amazing just like in the hollywood movies, then the M.P.s arrived and backed a truck up to one of the doors whilst sending in some savage looking dogs in the other , the pub was cleared out in a matter of moments and the offenders quickly driven away , in no time at all every thing was as normal as could be . Though strickly out of bounds the boys would regulaly sneak up to the moors on North Hill to watch the soldiers driving and firing the Tanks , on one occasion they found some dicarded bullets and a hand genade , which they had all the intention of taking home with them to let off at a later date , probably fortunatley for them they were caught by some soldiers and the prized possesions removed followed by a clip around the ear before being sent back down the hill. Sometimes though the soldiers would come charging through the farm yard whilst on manouvers , he said it would frighten the hell out of every one , as they fired blank bullets and lobbed explosives around shouting and yelling at each other , often the cows would stop giving milk and hens would'nt lay eggs for several days. there are many other stories he told us about the GIs , i will have to try and remember some more .

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.