大象传媒

1) I believe that it was in 1940, the ship SS Barnhorn was bombed off Pevensey Bay Sussex,and it then ran aground, spilling it's cargo of foodstuffs from Canada all over the beach.Hundreds of local people came with carts and barrows to retrieve what they could.
My father, Frederick French, pushed his barrow all the way from Hailsham and was able to gather up a few tins of food which he brought back home.My parents decided these would be kept and opened when the war was over.
When Peace was declared the tins,without any labels, were opened,and the family enjoyed a meal of vegetable soup, and peaches,all in excellent Condition!

2)In 1941,my brother Raymond aged 7,and myself aged 9 were walking our regular two-mile walk to our school at Grovelands,in London Road, Hailsham, from our home in Harebeating Lane.
We were just approaching the Senior School in Battle Road at about 8.30 am, when suddenly a lady in a nearby house, shouted from her bedroom window to "lay down quickly", which we did instinctly by her garden wall.
Two German fighter planes roared over our heads at roof level, firing their machine guns as they passed.Bullets were hitting the school walls opposite, but we escaped unhurt.We picked ourselves up and continued on our way to school.

3)In 1941-1942 my father Frederick French was in the Home Guard at Hailsham, and on several occasions, he had to do nightguard duties at the Martello Tower in Normans Bay.When he did this, my mother would be too nervous to stay at home with brothers Raymond (7), Alan(2) and me (9).We would all walk up to the bus stop at Harebeating Stores. Alan would be in the pushchair, and we would catch the No15 Maidstone and District bus to the Monkey Puzzle PH at Windmill Hill. Then we would walk up Bodle Street Green, to spend the night with our Grandparents,Jesse and Elizabeth Southouse, returning home the following morning.

4)In March 1941 our family were living at Harebeating Farm,Hailsham, and in the lane was a large thatched house, about a 100yds away. At 7am one Sunday morning my father saw from a bedroom window some smoke rising from the thatched roof of that house, so he he immediately ran to the house to wake the two elderly lady residents, and notify the Fire Brigade.
My father had to get a ladder up to the ladies window to wake the ladies,and by this time the roof was well alight. Then with the help of others now arriving he started dragging most of their antique furniture out into the lane, as the fire engine arrived, speeding along with it's bell ringing loudly.
By mid-morning the house was just a roofless, blackened,smouldering shell. The lovely garden spoilt by trampling feet,and hosepipes.Hundreds of people came down the footpath from Hailsham, walking along the lane to view the scene.
All the furniture was taken away in lorries, and the two very grateful ladies gave my father all their carpets, some with burn marks. Nevertheless, we had carpets on our floors at home for the very first time.

5)About a month before D-day,June 1944,
Harebeating Lane,Battle Road, Hailsham where we lived, was home to many Canadian soldiers. Their guns,vehicles and tents were hidden under the tall trees.
In the evenings, my brother Raymond and I would go and visit them,when the soldiers always welcomed us to join them around their camp fire, and we would enjoy toasted cheese sandwiches.Getting back home afterwards our Mother used to tick us off, saying "you won't want any supper"!
We used to love watching the Canadian soldiers marching smartly down Hailsham High Street to the Parish Chuch on a Sunday morning. One day we found the Lane empty,except for the cold ashes of the bonfires.
The Canadians had moved on and then we heard
the news of D-day and the Normandy landings.

6)In 1944 when I attended Hailsham Senior school, I was in Class 3a, the top class.
One of the masters,Mr Taylor, asked for volunteers to work in the school garden, which was once the playing fields, now turned into a fruit and vegetable garden, to supply the school canteen with fresh produce. I was always the first to put my hand up.
On one such afternoon I was working in the garden with about six other pupils, when the teacher yelled out to us to take cover behind a wall, as the siren sounded.As I looked up from behind the wall, directly above me,a black Doodlebug, the pilot-less flying bomb with it's engine stopped.
It was fallen to the earth when a British Typhoon fighter plane appeared, and the pilot very bravely put the wing of his plane under the wing of the doodlebug,making it fly a further 7 miles, before crashing and exploding in open fields.
7)
At Harebeating Farm Hailsham where we lived during the War, we had a large field nearby,and I recall a British Fighter landing on it, either because it was damaged in combat, or had run out of fuel.A day later a very large RAF Low Loader arrived, and the personnel dismantled the plane to take it away to be re-built and used again.
Also at Harebeating Farm,where we were at the edge of the Pevensey Marshes, where at one place a series of Dummy aircraft made of wood were laid outin such a way as to fool the enemy pilots , who then used to drop their bombs on them, rather than take them on to targets in London.Some of these bombs would explode quite close to us, and we would hear the shrapnel striking the farm buildings.
While shopping with my mother and brothers in Hailsham High St one day, we were buying our father's tobacco in Mitchell's Shop, when the siren sounded. The Air raid Wardens shepherded us into the deep underground shelter in Vicarage Field, where a modern shopping precinct now exists.In the shelter we befriended an elderly lady,who lived in the end house of Stoney Lane.
We remained friends with her and her husband for several years afterwards, often giving them some of our tea ration, as we were five in the family and had a larger ration, and they could not make their weekly 1/4lb last a week.
8) Some other wartime memories I have, was going with my mother to an office at the bottom right of North Street, Hailsham,to collect our allocation of Dried Milk Powder,Concentrated Orange Juice,and Cod Liver Oil. In George Street, in an empty shop, just below the George Hotel, we collected our Gas masks and were shown how to use them.
We regularly visited Hailsham Cemetery in Ersham Road, to visit the grave of my sister Margaret who died in 1938, aged 10 months. Whilst there we noticed the graves of the German airmen who were killed in the dog fights over our area.I think eventually there were six graves, beside the North Eastern fence, and after the war the bodies were exhumed and taken back to Germany.
Towards the end of the War, when I was about 14 years old,I worked as a newspaper delivery boy, for WH Smith's Rail Station Bookstall Hailsham.One round that I worked was,Hellingly,New Road,Station Road and Grove Hill.
At the top of Grove Hill, adjacent to the junction with Cinderford Lane, was an Italian prisoner of war camp, and I remember some of the prisoners standing outside asking to buy papers from me. After that day they always waited for me to get their daily papers, in order to keep up with world affairs.
It always struck me how very pleasant they were , and soon afterwards,those that wanted to were repatriated, while others stayed here and settled down

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