大象传媒

This story has been added to the website by Eleanor Fell on behalf of Peter Thorp, who had given his permission to add his story to the website and understand the terms and conditions.

I was born 3rd June 1939 the day my godmother was married so my parents didn鈥檛 go to the wedding. They sent her a telegram that I had arrived and under the circumstances none of us could go. I was christened the day war broke out, Sunday 3rd September 1939, my parents told me that not many people came, it was a quiet day.

It wasn鈥檛 my fault they started the war!

There was a private school next to Granny鈥檚 house in South Croydon. I remember on one visit, I watched from an upstairs window, the children playing in the garden and I felt left out because I was too young to join in. On the next visit all that was left was the shell of the school as an incendiary bomb had destroyed it. I don鈥檛 think my granny鈥檚 house was damaged at all. In those days it was a short walk from our house at 4, Milnwood Road, Horsham, Sussex, to open fields and farms.

My friends and I spent a lot of time roaming over farmland and rivers near Warnham Pond. We were often gone for hours, but it was no problem, in those days parents didn鈥檛 have the worries of the present day.

It was feather in our caps for a friend and I to get a ride on a tractor - as there weren鈥檛 many about. We thought nothing of the fact that it had steel spiked wheels and we were sitting on the half mud-guard just inches away from these, what looked like rotating axe heads. Latterly I realized it must have been better for the farmer to have steel wheels, no punctures, and there was a shortage of rubber.

Shortages included metals that were needed for the war effort, aluminium, copper, iron and steel. Households were asked to donate these, to be collected by the scrap man and pots, pans, iron bedsteads all went this way. The more exiting thing to watch was the iron gates and railings being cut down with an oxyacetylene torch and the showers of sparks that this created. The country lost a lot of beautiful irreplaceable craftsmanship made over centuries. I wonder what it did to the unprotected eyes of the children watching, no health and safety restrictions then.

We must have gone on an organised haymaking party because I have a picture with all the children standing on a hay cart. I remember getting a ride on the empty horsedrawn carts from the hayrick back to the hay field and then when they were loaded walking back to the rick behind the cart. My elder sister and I found our own way home, but it must have been later than the seven o鈥檆lock bedtime - as I remember a glorious summer evening with one of those sunsets that memory tells me was the best you can get. I can鈥檛 remember if we got into trouble for being late home.

I had two friends of my own age Christopher Lintot and John Hammond. Christopher lived about fifty yards away at the bottom of our road, I think his father had an engineering or building business. John was a farmer鈥檚 son and I remember that they had a couple of rotting dairy carts in their orchard. I think his father had changed from milking to making water trailers as I remember seeing a number of them in his barn. They were two wheel trailers with a large tank on the back; I presume they must have been for the army. They also had a number of packing cases, in a barn, big enough for two small boys to hide in with space inside to walk around. I wonder if the parts were assembled into the finished article there, to get production out of the way of the bombing of factories in the industrial cities.

The next farm across the valley, the other side of the river, had a dairy herd. I remember a visit to their cowshed / milking shed. The cows were all in a line feeding from the manger and there was a space behind for them to get in and out. I think we had come to see the milking and my sister had on a new dress, it was yellow with dark brown poker-dots. My sister was ahead of me so I had a front row seat when the cow by her lifted its tail. The shit hit the floor and sprayed the surrounding area and my sister鈥檚 new dress. I seem to remember the visit was cut short. I learnt that when visiting a cowshed, especially when milking, don鈥檛 stand behind a cow, especially when it lifts its tail.

My father had a safe job with Esso Petroleum and he was thirty six in 1939, possibly a little old for the forces. But either because he was a territorial in Singapore in the twenties or being brought up in that era, public school and white feather syndrome, he volunteered. My first memory of him was when he came home in full battle dress with kit bag and a real pistol in his holster. On this particular weekend leave he had wangled transport for himself and a couple of his soldiers who lived nearby. It turned out that he was the M T officer so had authorized himself a quarter ton truck. I don鈥檛 know what the regulations were, but he put it in the garage so that it wasn鈥檛 too obvious and so people didn鈥檛 ask awkward questions. We saw him very little during the war so my mother had to be both parents. He survived the war but was flown home from Germany or nearby, with a fractured skull, near the end. He was unconscious for two weeks.

We kept apples in the garage loft, all wrapped individually in newspaper so they would store over winter. We planted potatoes with quick lime in each hole to keep off the bugs. It stung if you got it in your eyes. We had lettuce, onions, cabbage, spinach and potatoes, in the garden. We had chives and two kinds of mint, the fluffy and smooth kind. We kept rabbits, that had babies which we children fed every day. We gathered rabbit food when we went for walks. One day the rabbits disappeared and my mother said someone must have left the hutch door open and a dog got them. But the butcher had been to see us and I never did like rabbit stew. We bottled fruit in season, pears, apples, quinces, raspberries, loganberries, strawberries, plums, black-currents, red-currents, gooseberries and enjoyed plum pie etc out of season. We caught the bus to fruit farms to Pick Your Own fruit. We made jams and apple jelly. Lemon curd was a favourite, but that may have been after the war when lemons were easier to come by. We kept our eggs in water in an earthenware croc, the evaporation was supposed to keep them cool. Cough mixture was made from a turnip sliced across in layers, which were replaced with brown sugar between the layers. This was put in a bowl and after some time, it was squeezed and doled out with a teaspoon. I think we enjoyed it as a treat rather than a medicine.

My mother tried to get help with the washing and housework after my brother was born. Washing was done in a gas-fired copper or the kitchen sink and put through a mangle to get rid of the excess water. A new cleaning lady arrived on washday and a large pile of washing accumulated on the kitchen floor. When the lady realized there was so much washing to do, she put on her hat and coat and stalked out in a huff, I don鈥檛 think she was expecting to work at all. I remember my sister, my mother and I sat on the pile of washing and collapsed in a fit of laughter.

The man from the council who swept the street had a horse and cart. He swept the rubbish into a pile and the horse would follow him, stopping when he put the rubbish in the cart. The horse would then wait for the next pile, it knew exactly what to do. These two-wheeled carts were made as tippers so that when they got to the yard the rubbish could be tipped in whatever place they wanted. Or if there was a load of gravel etc. for the road, it could be tipped out where it was needed. There were no hydraulics, I think the driver pulled a lever and all the contents tipped out. So no part loads.

The milkman who delivered milk to my grandmother鈥檚 house in South Croydon had a similarly trained horse. We watched them come up the hill, the milkman with his hand crate delivering to two or three houses, then refilling it and the horse stopping and starting by itself, it would be in the right place when the milkman needed to get more bottles. It would hold the loaded milk cart on the hill and watch to see how far the milkman had got to. Some times it would wait behind and then catch up but we were a little worried when it walked past him by two or three doors. Would it go off home by itself, but it never did. It waited for him as if to say, 鈥榢eep up or we won鈥檛 finish today鈥�.

We had some Canadian soldiers billeted at the top of the road. They were a very happy, cheerful lot. When we met them in the street they would call out to my brother and I, 鈥淗iya Red鈥�, because we had red hair. One of them, Lucien, was engaged to my brother鈥檚 godmother, Unice, who was staying in our house, but he was killed before they could get married. I believe that after the war she went to Canada and visited his parents. I remember Nigel was christened in Horsham Parish church when it was complete and before they knocked the main body of the church down leaving just the spire. Unice was a teacher who came from Leatherhead. She and mother became good friends and was a friend of the family until she died in the nineties. My younger brother adored her 鈥� and tried to be helpful by putting his milk into the petrol tank of her car!! This at the height of petrol rationing, the tank and fuel system had to be drained!!

We had a table air-raid shelter in the dining room, I remember eating meals sitting at it. The bolts that held it together made lumps in the tablecloth. It had large angle iron supports for the legs and sheet steel top and bottom. The sides were made of square mesh steel wire that hooked on to the outside. The idea was that the house could fall down around you but the family would be safe in their little steel box. We used it to play all sorts of games and on at least one day we used it in earnest.

My mother got all us children into the table shelter and when we heard the doodlebug motor, she went outside to see if she could see it. At that moment the engine stopped. I can鈥檛 remember if she stayed outside, I think she saw it pass low overhead, in any case the bomb obliterated a house about four hundred yards away across the block on the other side of the main road. Our house and surprisingly the window glass were undamaged, except that the locks were blown off both the front and back doors. I remember holding the metal lock socket from the front door jam. It had a sharp splinter of wood sticking out from the top and bottom, like a sword with two blades opposite each other.

Not only did we have our own air raid shelter, we also had public ones in strategic places, the nearest big one was at the junction by Jackson鈥檚 Garage (later Caffyns). They were long block houses made with brick walls and a thick flat roof of reinforced concrete. I remember after the war they had to use a great steel ball on the end of a crane to break up the concrete roofs. The entrances had a brick wall outside to stop bomb blast and debris entering. The last red squirrels I remember seeing in the wild, were in the trees along the roadside between that shelter and home, I think we had no grey ones then.

The main road from Dorking to the coast passed at the top of our road and a group of us children watched a convoy of troops pass by in trucks, bren-gun carriers and most memorably DKW鈥檚, Ducks. The convoy took hours to pass and must have been going to the coast for the D-day landings.
I remember seeing lines and lines of bren-gun carriers on railway trucks as we watched from the train when going to Grannies. When passing Gatwick Airfield, pronounced Gattic (like attic) in those days, you couldn鈥檛 see any aircraft as there were always trucks or carriages parked in the way. It was most annoying for a young lad brought up on fighter pilot heroes and bombs, not being able to see real aircraft and knowing that they were there.

My mother told me that the kind old lady next door was given a hard time by some because her surname was 鈥楰lein鈥�, but that her neighbours, my mother included, stood up for her and the persecution didn鈥檛 last.

My grandmother had a car, it was a green and black Hillman Minx and it only came out on special occasions because of petrol rationing. My favourite auntie Daisy drove it and we children sat in the back. There were no seatbelts. The rear doors opened forwards, so if the car was going along when they were opened, the wind caught them and jerked them open very quickly. I must have been fiddling with the door handle as the door opened and dragged me out. I was launched out into a ditch clutching my favourite toy, a rather large stuffed pander. We can鈥檛 have been going very fast but it must have been the panda that saved me as I survived with only a few scratches from the brambles.

My first nursery school was in a private Girls school at the top of the road that took boys but only in their nursery class. I remember they had their own swimming pool, unheated. We had a quiet period near the end of the morning when all the youngsters lay down, each on their own mat to rest for an hour. During an air raid we were taken down into a narrow cellar, we sat on benches on either side and sang songs like 鈥渉ere we sit like birds in the wilderness鈥�, 鈥渢en green bottles鈥� etc.

My father鈥檚 wartime song was 鈥渞oll me over in the clover, roll me over, lay me down and do it again鈥� which I now realize he sang with tongue in cheek knowing we didn鈥檛 understand the innuendo, but that it might make mother smile.

One day we stood at the top of the road and watched hundreds of charabancs go past taking people to the coast. We stood there counting the coaches going by nose to tail, all colours and shapes, for what seemed like hours and I can鈥檛 remember now how many we counted. My memory says this was at the end of the war or just after, presumably they had recently got the fuel rationing relaxed. In retrospect they could have been carrying troops to war but we were more interested in the bright coloured coaches, as we didn鈥檛 usually see any coaches at all, let alone a continuous stream of them.

I can鈥檛 remember going away for holidays, apart from going to Granny鈥檚 house to give mother a break for a few days, but even then we didn鈥檛 go as a family. My first view of the seaside was in the Worthing area. The sands were covered in invasion protection defences, concrete blocks and high rusty scaffolding that went on for miles. Very frustrating for a small boy who had books that said sandy beaches were great fun to play on. The danger notices prevented us from even going on the beach that was visible from the land side of the defences.

We didn鈥檛 know what a banana was except that there were these yellow pictures of them stuck up in the top corner of the greengrocer鈥檚 window. 鈥淵es we have no bananas鈥�.
Sweets we only expected to find in a food parcel from Canada or Australia never in a shop.
I remember my first ice cream, it was a round paper cylinder filled with ice cream. I think they made it in long lengths and then cut it into rationed portions. A single piece was separated from the rest and placed on a cone, the paper was unwound leaving a measured amount to be licked.

All the children from the surrounding houses had a party in the side lawn of the house opposite us on VE day. From the photograph we looked a drab lot with our short cropped hair, long shorts and even the girls with rather lifeless ribbons in their hair looked discarded - probably due to clothes rationing. But you can bet we had a great party.

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