大象传媒

I was born in 1928 in Bedfordshire, and grew up at Colmworth where my father was a farm manager. Although I didn鈥檛 leave school until I was thirteen and a half, I had helped out on the farm since I was about ten.

When the war started, I was a member of the North Beds Army Cadet Force and we acted as runners and tea makers for the local Home Guard Units.

We had an RAF base nearby, and my mother set a room aside for visiting wives to stay in so they could be near their husbands. There was no charge; I suppose you could say it was just part of the war effort.

At Colmworth we also had a Prisoner of War camp. This initially housed German prisoners, but after about 1943, they were replaced by Italians. As a 15 /16 year old, I would drive up to the camp on the tractor with a trailer with bales of straw down the middle, and pick up about 10 to 20 POWs to help on the farm. They would help with picking potatoes, and collecting the harvest etc. Some of the older ones, in their thirties, were very good. They seemed to accept that they were over here, and they got on with it. But some of the younger ones were a bit surly and sometimes just sat there refusing to move. It could be a bit frightening at times, as there was only me and two guards and all these POWs. Having said that, they never actually caused me any trouble.

In fact they had quite a good life. They worked the same hours as us (7am till 5pm), and had a reasonable amount of freedom. Towards the end of the war, there were two Italians living in a converted barn. People had donated furniture, they earned a wage, and had rations like the rest of us. In fact after the war many Italians came back, and there is still a strong Italian population in Bedford.

Not many tried to escape, though I do remember one chap who attacked his guard while they were hedge trimming. He stole his rifle and set off. He was shot by the Home Guard a few villages away.

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