大象传媒

Memories of a country boy

I was born in 1938, and so was not aware of anything until the war had been in progress for quite some time. It is not possible to put dates to any of the events that occurred, mainly because as a child time had very little importance.

I was born in a farm cottage, the right hand one of two semi-detached cottages. It was in a village named Moreton Valence, approximately 7 miles south of Gloucester. My father worked for the farmer that owned the cottages. The cottages were well away from any other houses and backed onto the churchyard boundary fence. The area was, naturally, very rural with tree-lined fields, orchards, etc.

I was not aware of being affected by the war itself, but we had the then normal deprivations of no electricity or gas, no running water and only an outside toilet. Light was from oil lamps that needed the wicks to be trimmed every day, heating was from a single range that served as the cooker, water was hand pumped from a well in the garden and the toilet bucket had to be periodically emptied into a hole dug in the garden. We did have the luxury of a radio but a lead acid battery powered this and that had to be taken to the nearest garage (petrol station) for recharging quite frequently. It was a hard life living miles from anywhere in the countryside.

Two German prisoners of war occupied the other cottage. I believe that one of them at least, had been part of the crew of a crashed bomber. They had obviously been through a period of imprisonment and assessment before being considered safe and able to be released to work on the same farm as my father. My elder relatives have told me that the Germans were not allowed to roam freely or go into the nearest town of Gloucester so my family did their shopping for them. One of them we knew as William (from Wilhelm) was regarded as an anti nazi and was quite happy to be where he was for the duration of the war but the other one known as Henry (from Heinz) was considered a pro nazi. William married an English girl after the war and remained in this country. I do not know what happened to Henry. I spent quite a lot of time in their company and can remember only good things. The Germans did appreciate the help given to them by my family and repaid it by making a ship-in-a-bottle for all my four elder sisters and my mother. Their only requirement was a square-shaped Johnny Walker whisky bottle. I would imagine that these would have been very difficult to obtain but I know that they were as I have the one that was made for my mother.

At some point during the war, the Germans were transferred to another part of the country. My family then moved into their cottage because it was larger and we were a large family. A new family then moved into the cottage we had vacated. There was a woman with two daughters. The husband was a prisoner of the Japanese and I can remember his eventual return, being very sick and as thin as a rake.

Because my father worked on a farm we were able to obtain items of food that would have been very difficult to obtain elsewhere. In those days, farms were very self-sufficient and so we had a good supply of butter, cheese, eggs, milk and bacon and a large garden provided all the vegetables we could use. In the summer, there was also an abundant supply of fresh fruit from the local orchards.

Across the lane that ran in front of the cottages was a field and it had a long row of large trees lining the lane. At some time that must have been towards the end of the war because I can remember it well, an anti-aircraft battery with searchlights was set up under these trees. It would have served as an outer defence against enemy aircraft on their way to attack the city of Gloucester and a number of local airfields and even the Gloucester to Sharpness canal. Can you imagine what it must have been like having large guns firing through the night as close as 20 yards or so from your house? An elder sister tells me that every night that the guns were in action we all had to take shelter in case the enemy bombed or strafed them. Apparently, this was normally under the stairs or under a heavy table. I often visited the gun site in the daytime and became a sort of mascot to the soldiers. One day, near the end of summer, the cook told me to go around the hedges and collect as many blackberries as I could. This I did and the cook baked a blackberry and apple pie for me and my family. He used apples from the nearby orchard and army rations for the pastry. You can imagine how welcome this was at that time. I do not know if there is any connection, but blackberry and apple pie is still a favourite of mine.

My father was in the local home guard and I often went with them as they patrolled the local area presumably looking for enemy paratroopers or shot-down aircrew. I can't remember them ever finding anything other than vast amounts of the metallic chaff known as window that was dropped by aircraft to confuse ground radar. For some unknown reason, our larder contained lots of this chaff, still in thick wads that had not broken up in the air as it was supposed to. I can't imagine what my father intended to do with it. I know that we had numerous bombs dropped in the general area but I think that death or injury from dropping lumps of chaff would have been more likely.

The main road from Gloucester to Bristol, the A38, was used extensively by military convoys carrying troops and taking armoured fighting vehicles that had been made in Gloucester. On the occasional visit by bus into Gloucester you could see the bomb craters along the side of the main road. At the junction of Church Lane (down which I lived) and the A38 there was a transport caf茅 and it was usually a good place to go. I would meet there with other children from the village and wave at the troops as they passed. The most significant memory of this was when we saw Americans for the first time. They threw out lots of sweets for us kids and we had never seen their like before. When I think of it now I can still recall the unique taste of some of them. I cannot remember it specifically, but I am sure that we must also have had the first taste then of what is now the ubiquitous chewing gum!

Three of my elder sisters joined the ATS and played their part in the war effort. One of them worked as part of the team on an anti-aircraft gun shooting down Doodlebugs (V1s), one was a driver and the other was a secretary/typist. I had four elder sisters and they all went out with soldiers from various regiments. Three of these were involved in numerous actions from Europe to north Africa and one of them ended up as a long-term prisoner of war of the Japanese. My four sisters all married their soldier boyfriends, during the war and in uniform. You can imagine that when they all managed to get home for festive occasions there was a lot of talk about the war.

After the war ended, the countryside returned to normal and we continued living in the farm cottage until my father contracted dermatitis from working with cattle. Once he could no longer work on the farm we had to move from the area because the cottage was tied to the work.

We still lived in the country, now about 4 miles from Gloucester, but things would never be quite the same again. Strangely, our accommodation was now a converted Nissan hut. It was on the site of a former RAF site near to an airfield at Moreton Valence that the local council had taken over to provide much needed homes for local families. We now had electricity but heating was still by a coal-fired range and one of the large stoves normally associated with barrack rooms. The water was from an outside communal tap that froze often during a hard winter and our toilet was still outside. At least a contractor emptied that regularly.

It must be difficult for young people today to imagine the hardships we had to endure in the period of the last war and immediately after. I hope for their sakes that we never descend again into a time where they would be deprived of all their modern conveniences and electronic gadgets.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.