大象传媒

This story has been written onto the 大象传媒 People鈥檚 War site by CSV Storygatherer Coralie, on behalf of Pat Wall. It has been added to the site with her permission and Pat fully understands the terms and conditions of the site.

I was born and bred in Penzance and was 12 years old when the war started. School holidays were mostly spent working on a farm at White-cross, a hamlet on the Penzance to Hayle road. One day at harvest time we were stooking corn when a plane passed low over the field. I looked up. My sister saw my face and said 鈥淲hat鈥檚 the matter?鈥� 鈥淚t had a cross on it鈥� I said, 鈥渁 German鈥�. A few minutes later it was coming back, very fast, and just skimming the hedges and machine-gunning along the road. My sister threw me into the corn-stook and landed on top of me. A bus in the village was hit, several people were injured and one killed. These attacks were known as 鈥淗it and Run鈥� raids. The two bombs hit St. Ives.

Our house at Penzance overlooks the harbour and we watched the 鈥淪cillorian鈥� setting out on her daily journey to the Scillies 鈥� she had her own barrage balloon! For a few days we had 3 soldiers with a small ack-ack gun in the garden. Later I think it was on the Battery Rocks near the swimming pool.

We had a Morrison shelter taking up most of the sitting room. One night the siren sounded and we all crawled into it. Two or three bombs were dropped 鈥� one pretty close 鈥� and when the 鈥渁ll clear鈥� sounded we went off to bed. I was very surprised to find a very large piece of granite in the middle of my bed, also a large hole in the roof.

Many people now know the 3-mile stretch of beach between Gwithian and Hayle estuary. However in the 40鈥檚, very few people used it. It could have been an ideal area for a German landing so the army decided to protect the area. Stakes, 8 feet or so, were driven into the sand at regular intervals 鈥� 鈥減oints鈥� pointing seawards as an anti-tank device. Thank God they were never needed. However, the locals made good use of them by tying baited lines from one stake to another. Plenty of fish were caught this way. The public were supposed not to go on the beaches and big coils of barbed wire strung above H.W.M. However, you can鈥檛 stop a Cornish boy (or girl) from going on the beach and we found a way. We always carried a length of rope with us to drag home any driftwood or other useful flotsam. All the summer 鈥渉uts鈥� at Gwithian were taken over for London evacuees. Very few of them stayed for long 鈥� it must have been a shock for them after the streets of London.

School went on as usual. There was a shortage of teachers, of course. We had milk and a dry split mid-morning. Dinners were O.K.; there was always excellent fish pie on Fridays (fish straight from Newlyn). Once a group of girls went over to the Mount at very low tide to gather a type of red seaweed. Does anyone know what it could have been used for?

All these things are still very fresh in my memory.

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