大象传媒

When the war started nothing much changed at first. But then a big Army camp was set up on Newmarket Road, where the car sale showrooms now are. This meant that at most weekends there were lots of soldiers wandering the town. Most of them had never been away from home before. Then after a few weeks training a lot of new faces would appear. Next to the camp was a small grass airfield where they flew Lysanders from (it was said that this was where agents were taken to be dropped into Europe, not sure if that was true).

There were also lots of airfields set up around Bury. Some of these were American bases, one in particular being at Rougham. It is now maintained as a Museum.

Sometimes we would walk or cycle up the back road that leads to Thurston to watch the Flying Fortresses taking off or landing. I cannot remember the planes that were there earlier. And then there were the raids by German planes, and we would stand out in the street and watch them fly over. They would use the original sugar-beet factory as a marker. From listening to the radio we soon learnt that if the planes went to the right of the sugar beet factory, they were heading to the Midlands and Liverpool. If they went to the left they were going to London.

At weekends the Americans would come into town. All the children would run after them asking for sweets and gum. At this time my father was working at the Mildenhall base, and he became friendly with one of the men serving there. John was not into drinking and chasing girls, so at weekends he would come to our house and spend time with us. We have been friends ever since, we still write to each other. Also at this time there was a German prisoner-of-war camp just outside the town, and they were allowed into Bury at the weekends. I became friendly with one whose name was Helmut Mader. When he went home to Czechoslovakia after the war, we began writing to each other. I have kept ever letter and card he sent me. Sadly he has now passed away, but we are still in touch with Ruth his widow.

During the War it was compulsory for children of certain ages to do thirty half days farm work a year. This could be anything, the good thing was that we got paid for doing it. A farmer would telephone the School asking for so many children on a certain day and return them at the end of the day. Some of the things we did were planting potatoes. This involved walking down a furrow with a bucket of potatoes, dropping one in front of your foot at every step taken. We also did potato picking, which was gathering them up after the tractor had turned them up. We also did pea and fruit picking. At weekends we would go again, if the farm was close enough to get to, so that we could earn some more money.

Contributed by Ipswich Museum with Peter Jackson Phillip's permission.

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