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27 — Roma Innes, and Dorothy and Nigel Whateley lived at Shottery Post Office during the War:

(Roma): “I mean the war broke out when I was ten, so I think you enjoy life at that age…All I can remember was that I was everlasting hungry, there never seemed to be enough to eat during the war, but with teenagers I think and that age group you’re hungry anyhow aren’t you, if there’s any sort of restriction on food, you know that’s when you feel it most — that was the only thing I can remember, that I could have eaten more. There was rationing you see.

I saw the aircraft that came down in Evesham Place. I was taking two of the boys tea in bed, and I said, oh there’s an aircraft there doing something strange and within seconds it had come plonk down into Evesham Place. The pilot and there was a trainee wasn’t he I think, the instructor and the trainee were both killed. Of course we as youngsters upstakes and all ran down the road to be sort of kept back, so we didn’t see anything too unpleasant.

Stratford was a much nicer place I think; during the war there were a lot less people, and there wasn’t the traffic that there is now - there weren’t so many cars about with petrol rationing, we all rode bicycles.

One story I have got, someone said that the coach trade (round the Shakespeare area) really started with a doctor in Birmingham when there were some of the wounded soldiers in Birmingham, he thought he’d like to bring them out to see Anne Hathaway’s Cottage and he hired a coach….Emmy Salmon was a guide there, she lived well into her nineties, she used to sing to the visitors, and Roger Thompson (who started Guide Friday) used to say I am sorry about it, but she’s the only person that remembered Shakespeare as a boy!

Denzil the eldest brother was in the war, well he was just towards the end of the war, he was a flight sergeant, navigator, and Basil the next one was a pilot. Denzil trained in South Africa and Basil trained in Canada. I (Dorothy) was in the Air Force, interpreting photographs, aerial photographs, but there was a lot of time we didn’t have anything to do. (The Aerial Photographers) just did training round the British Isles really; they did go on bombing raids when I was in Cambridge, but that was the only time."

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