大象传媒

During and after the war years my family and I lived in the small village of Haresfield, near Gloucester. Having been born in 1935, I grew with the war. My father, the local signalman on the LMS railway, was in the first world war so knowing the brutality of war never spoke about it. He would very often come off night duty and describe how Bristol or Gloucester had been bombed during the night he having seen the glow of fires in the night sky.
Our village, besides having a main railway line to the south running through it, was surrounded by RAF Ordinance Depots and an Airfield at Moreton Vallence from where Avero Ansons flew on a daily basis. All these targets made us vulnerable to air attacks. As a child of tender years and not really knowing what war was about, I suppose I can say that bombs dropping around the oridinace sites and the airfield was somewhat exciting and I remember the first bombs dropping around number four site which was close to the airfield. Several of us would run to the area and see the craters caused by them. This happened several time, fortunately I cannot recall anyone being killed. On one occasion a stick of six bombs dropped less than a quarter of mile from our house, between the railway and the airfield, and I apparently slept through the lot!
Looking back, it must have been at the build up to the D-Day landings, somehow we would learn that an American convoy of troops were travelling south on the A38 road. We would rush down to The Cross Keys Pub and watch them go by in their trucks and jeeps, we would wave and they would respond and throw chewing gum, biscuits and candy to us as they passed. This was wonderful to us kids who had'nt seen sweets at all. Our parents were busy making do on the megre rations provided by the ration books.
We were somewhat self sufficient living in a country village because my father had a large garden and allotment which he kept fully stocked by saving his own seeds. There was always the pig kept for us by the local farmer and slaughtered when it was ready. The pig meat was shared around the villagers, the bacon sides and hams were cured by salting on a home made elm bench. No freezers or fridges in those days. Outside loo, no running water or electricity or gas!
We took in two evacuees from Birmingham during this period, Ronnie Dale and Stan Yates who then became part of our family. There were several evacuees in the village who added a different perspective to our life. I remember the morning of the D-Day landings, we were playing with model aircraft which had been very expertly made out of railway sleeper wood by one of the lads from Newcastle. The droves of attack aircraft bearing the white stripes upon their wings were flying overhead. In those dark days the villagers looked after each other, the elderly especially.
There was a very dark week in the history of the village in the fourties, three Avero Ansons which had just taken off on different days from Moreton Vallence airfield, caught fire and crashed, killing the crews. Some of these men are buried in Haresfield churchyard close by the grave of my mother and father, but they are still remembered, I make sure their graves a re kept when I visit mum and dad and the local RBL branch plant the poppies during rememberance week. To this day I can still identify the crash sites.
We lost one soldier during the war and that was Fred Ireland who was killed in action whilst serving with the Gloucestershire regiment in Burma. He is remembered inside the church. I can still see him in his uniform walking down the road in uniform with his wife and parents to catch the train going back from leave. Unfortunately he was one of those with no known grave and his mother never believed that he had been killed until it is said she saw him on her death bed years later.
A very regular occurrance which took place during those days was the gas mask practice. Once a week, Mr Hurdle, our schoolheadmaster would have us adorn the masks and we would run from the school to the church and back, a distance overall of about a mile. What with that excercise and the 'Dig for Victory' campaign, (we utilised part of an adjacent field to till and grow our food which would be used in our canteen) there was not much school work accomplished. The farmer's sons regularly had time off from school to help with harvest and such like. Of course they were chuffed to bits, whilst the rest remained very envious. I can recall that I was in the school building at about 12 noon, that I heard that Paris had been liberated. Funny how things stick in the mind!

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