大象传媒

On a sunny afternoon on Friday 1st September1939 I was walking home from the cat and dogs meat shop at the six dials in Southampton where I was an errand boy, althoughI was only twelve and a half years old I delivered cat and dog meat all over town for 1/- a week and as I walked towards my home in Northam, and as I'd just been paid, I was thinking how to spend it, 2d for pictures at the Kingsland Square on Saturday afternoon, 1d for the collection on Sunday at Holy Rood church where I was a choirboy, 6d for Wednesday night Speedway leaving 3d for sweets and icecreams.
I arrived home to Belvedere Terrace and saw this big lorry outside our house, I knew it was my Uncle Fred's because I'd been on holiday at his home in Dorset only a fortnight earlier, what I didn't know was that he'd come to collect my younger brother and sister and myself and evacuate us to his home in Broadstone, Dorset.
Broadstone was a lovely village, it was the village my dad came from and we had over forty relations living in and around it, it was surrounded with heath land and pine woods, the village itself had a railway station, one pub,(hotel)a Conservative club, three churches, a fair sprinkling of shops a golf links and the most wonderful recreation ground you could ever imagine, it was three miles from Poole.
We settled in well with our relatives, I shared a bedroom with my cousin and became a member of his gang even though they were all a couple of years older than me. I got myself a newspaper round at Yard's shop but soon changed to a paper round at W.H.Smith's at the railway station for an extra 6d a week,I also had an errand boy's job at Haines the chemist.
Also evacuated to the village were schools from Southampton and London, I went in with the Southampton kids and at first we had our classrooms in the Methodist church but was soon put in with the locals in the Broadstone school, the londoners went into the Womans Institute hall and stayed all through the war.
The period of the phony war was good for us kids, the gang had a couple of air rifles so we went shooting rabbit in the wood but never did catch any, we even had a motor bike with petrol in it but we hardly got it going, we played football and cricket, went to Poole Saturday nights to the fun-fair and to Poole again on Sunday nights to the pictures, I use to go to the Tivoli cinema in Wimborne on Saturday mornings with a female cousin, we use to sit in the double seat in the back row, we thought we were in love.We even went home for xmas and I had the best Xmas present ever, two new suits with long trousers.
When the Battle of Britain started our school wasn't prepared for it, when the sirens sounded we use to stand in very high ditches and many times we watched dog fights going on, and once we saw a spitefire come down low and do a victory roll, it wasn't long before we had a proper shelter.
During the Battle of Britain my Mum and Dad was bombed out of their home so they decided to come back to Broadstone to live and so we were a family once again , Dad, who had been an iron worker all his working life found a job on Poole quay with Poole Iron Foundry. Sometime in early March 1941 I left school and on the same day and because the whole gang were in it, I joined the Home Guard, my Dad didn't take too kindly to it but he came round and joined himself soon after
I went to work full time for W.H.Smiths for 14/6 a week, my first job was a paper round at the next village of Corfe Mullen which took about two hours and because I did a lot of canvassing like selling stationary, toilet paper, greaseproof paper etc,the manager raised my wages to a pound a week. I stopped at that job for about six months and then one of the gang told me there was a job going working with him at a boat yard by Hamworthy Bridge in Poole for two pounds a week, we were making huge rafts which were towed out to sea and used for target practise for the R.A.F. All went well for about five months and then one day a German plane came out of the clouds and dropped two bombs, one each side of the bridge, one bomb blew up a wood yard and two people with it and the other dropped on the factory where my Dad worked, it landed between my Dad and his apprentice, my Dad had shrapnel in his arm, his apprentice was killed by the blast.
My mother thought it was too dangerous working on Poole quay so she found me a job a lot nearer home, half a mile to be exact at a place called Creekmoor, they'd built a large Royal Ordinance Factory there which was making cannon guns for fighter aircraft. My job was in the "Tool and Gauge" store, along with three women we supplied the whole factoy,I enjoyed the job even though it was long hours. After six months I was asked if I'd like to look after the stores on permanent nights so there I was a fifteen year old working six nights a week, the job lasted about two years and then I was asked if I'd like to go into the Progress Dept still working nights, I accepted and stayed there until I was eighteen when I was called up for the army on March 15th 1945.
During those years we had our share of incidents such as air raid warnings, any German bomber going up to the Midlands usually crossed over the coast at Poole such as the big raid on Coventry, we never bothered to get out of bed until one night they dropped two land mines half way between our house and the factory, one mine killed two people when it blew up their home, the other went off in their orchard and caused the biggest crater I'd ever seen, it broke lots of window around the district but after that we went to the shelter every time the siren went. We went to the shelter one night and saw a string of flares lighting up the whole district,that's when the bombs started to come down, it went on for a long time and they seemed to be dropping in the next garden but in reality all the bombs dropped on Brownsea Island, an island in Poole Harbour, a naval detachment stationed on the island set up decoy fires and every bomb landed there, next morning ther wasn't a tree standing on the Island.
The incident that scared me the most was when a German bomber came over so low that you could see some of the crew, it was right over us when it released two bombs which exploded on waste ground at the back of Broadstone cemetry which was about a mile away, the plane came down the other side of Wimborne.
In those days everyone had just one week's holiday and if you were patriotic you spent that week on a Goverment Agriculture Holiday, you were given a train ticket and they even gave a nominal wage, most of the time you were picking or gathering vegatables, I went on two of these holidays, one to Portsatha in Cornwall and the other to Pewsey in Wiltshire.I did my six weeks basic training at Colchester and was then put into the R.A.O.C. as a storeman so they sent me to the lovely sea-side resort of Saltburn-by-the-Sea in Yorkshire on a month's course, it was here that we celebrated V.E.day with two extra day's leave,from there I went to Taunton to a C.C.D.(Civilian Clothing Depot)a place where soldiers being demobbed received all their civilian clothing, it was just like a glorified Burton's, there were civilian tailors on hand, we had to wear ties and shoes, it wasn't a bad posting and whilst on my next leave V.J.day was announced I had two more extra days.
I went on to better postings such as C.C.D.'s in London and York, six months under cavass in Kensington Gardens for the Victory Parade, on the docks in Hamburg and finally in charge of a riding stables with three German grooms just outside Hamburg, I never did get to do any storekeeping in all the time I was in the army

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