大象传媒

This story was gathered at the Bedfordshire County Show and submitted to the People鈥檚 war site by Gillian Ridley for Three Counties Action on behalf of Mr Keith Frank Coleman and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

We lived way out in the country and the tradesmen came round in vans Butchers, Bakers etc. soon the lads who came round would be called up for the forces, and after a while would come round to their ex customers to say good bye and show off their uniforms. Most of them we never saw again. The Buckingham regiment ended up in Burma, I think, fighting the Japanese, these country lads had never been on a train before but before long they were the other side of the world fighting in the jungle, ending up dead or prisoners of the Japanese.

The planes would drop practice bombs during the night and day and each time the earth would vibrate causing the cock pheasants to reply with (cock up cock up).

The work on the farms carried on as usual but with more ploughing for grain, more tractors were being used, some being lent by the war Agricultural committee.
The horse drawn wagons and implements were converted for tractor use, the work at harvest time had to be done, also by estate workers like Gardeners, Woodmen Gamekeepers etc. as well as the farm workers. The tractors were mainly little Fordson's, they ran on T.V.O. or paraffin as it was known, they had to be started on petrol and run until the engine was warm and then switched over to T.V.O.
The petrol was dyed red to stop it being used illegally by car owners, although not many people owned cars only the Gentry or Doctors etc. The cars had their lights masked and had their mudguards painted white around the edges.

From the beginning of the War there was a black out, there wasn鈥檛 a crack of light to be seen from your windows.
Everything was rationed, of course, but at our age we didn鈥檛 understand the gravity of it, I know we had to drink sugarless tea and a little knob of margarine had to last a week, bread was off white in colour and went stale in a day. We had about twenty clothing coupons a year about enough to buy a pair of shoes.

Early on in the War I remember going to Towcester with my Mother and when we were in a shop my eyes began to sting and we all wondered what was happing. It turned out that they were spreading a kind of gas and wanted to see what the reaction was, we hadn鈥檛 taken our gas masks.
We had gone there by bus and, as it was in those days, there was a queue waiting for the return journey. It turned out that there was not enough room for some of us so my Mother and I had to walk the eight miles home.

The trains and busses were always full as were the cinemas. We would cycle to the Chandos cinema at Buckingham and leave our bikes propped up by the wall outside. The seats cost a shilling. If it had been raining the cinema would fill up with steam as the people鈥檚 clothes began to warm up.
Nearly everybody smoked and cigarettes were in short supply, on Pub doors would be a sign saying 鈥榮orry no cigarettes鈥� later American cigarettes could be obtained illegally, I expect via the black market.

An Italian Prisoner of war camp was built at Water Stratford, which was about three miles as the crow flies. My Mother and I would cycle past it as we went to visit my Gran who was a cook for the workers (mostly Irish) who were building the airfield at Finmere. My Gran did the same job when Great Horwood 'drome was built. By the early forties aerodromes were everywhere and the noise of aircraft went on day and night.

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