大象传媒

When the war started, my father thought that things were going to get very, very bad in England and he tried to persuade my mother to take their, then, only child (my elder brother) away to Canada, firstly to be safe, and secondly to help raise the next generation, who could someday return to rescue Britain. But my mother refused to leave him and would not go.

They sold their house in Rugby and moved to a cottage, with a paddock attached, in the village of Thurlaston, about three miles out of town. Here they were to keep ducks and chickens, a couple of goats, and bees for their honey. They had fruit trees in the orchard, and in the paddock they grew oats, to feed the livestock; and of course, 鈥渄ig for victory鈥�, they grew vegetables. With these weapons my parents fought the war.

Beneath the cottage was a large brick-arched cellar, which they stocked with rows and rows of tinned foods, including tinned meat and tins of biscuits. Soon this storehouse was bulging with bottled and dried fruit, duck鈥檚 and hen鈥檚 eggs in barrels of waterglass, goat鈥檚 cheese, and jars of honey. The honey was often used for barter; for example, a cup of honey could buy some sweets from Mrs Hirons at the Post Office, opposite. To feed the bees, a special allowance of sugar was made. It came in small sacks, and at one stage the authorities had this special bee-sugar dyed green to prevent it appearing on the black-market. Unfortunately this caused the honey to take on a greenish colour.

One day, my mother was at home when she received a message that a goat they had ordered had arrived at the railway station in Rugby and was awaiting collection. It was then she discovered that it is not easy to lead, pull, push, entice or otherwise get a goat to walk the three miles home, and that their new goat was very stubborn and had an extremely nasty temperament.

My father鈥檚 aunt and her family used to come at night to escape the bombing in Coventry, where they lived. The bombing was so bad that they had, sometimes, even resorted to sleeping in the hedgerows in the countryside around Coventry. My father鈥檚 sister had been living in Malaya before the war, with her husband, and their two children. They managed to get out of Malaya just before the Japanese invaded, and arriving back in England with nowhere else to live, they all came to stay at the cottage, too. The house was full to bursting.

My father was in a Reserved Occupation, working at the BTH factory in Rugby, on the electrical system for torpedoes. He had an underground office there, and in the next office Frank Whittle worked on the design of his jet engines.

Father joined the Home Guard. He spent many nights in a nearby windmill, which was used as a lookout post. Our bathroom was chosen as the best place to store the platoon鈥檚 arms and ammunition, which, considering it was a thatched-roof cottage, and they were worried about incendiaries, seems a strange decision. On one occasion, after they had finished duty, his platoon decided to go to the pub, and leaving all their gear in the boot of my father鈥檚 car, they went in for a drink. Unfortunately a policeman came by and checked the car. He found the boot unlocked, and all their rifles and ammunition there for the taking, by any German who happened to be passing! They got a real rollicking for that.

We moved away from the cottage soon after the war. My mother was not sorry to see the last of the goats, but continued to keep chickens until the 1960s, and my father was a beekeeper and grower of vegetables for the rest of his life.

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Joe Taylor for the CSV Action Desk at 大象传媒 Hereford and Worcester on behalf of himself and Richard Taylor and has been added to the site with their permission. The authors fully understand the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

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