大象传媒

In the high tension run up to war, cigarette cards were circulating, one series was the Aircraft of the RAF. One card showed a 3/4 front shot of a flying Spitfire. It looked so beautiful, I could not get enough photographs of it. When war broke out I was 9 years old and I remember PM Chamberlain's speech about not receiving a reply to his message to Hitler and therefore we were at war.
I cried in fright, let's face it, I had no idea what "war" was but it sounded terrifying. My parents knew and pacified me saying nothing would happen for the next few weeks. They were right. Living in the far distant countryside on a ridge overlooking the beautiful Wye valley, what could possibly happen?
School carried on as normal, I did quite well and went on to Lady Hawkins School in Kington, then a Grammar school. Of the war we saw little. Occasionally we would be surrounded by military manoeuvers on the common nearby. One day an enthusiastic pilot of a Westland Lysander appeared in a steep climb from "attacking" a group of soldiers behind a ridge 200 yards away, they were on exercises from the nearby camp at Malhollam. Lysanders dissappeared soon after and I was an adult before stories came out about the SOE and their giving "lifts" into and out of enemy teritory using them.
Being on a ridge at nearly 1,000 feet above sea level, we had views for twenty plus miles in most directions and when the night bombing started in 1940, the flashes and occasionally the sounds from Birmingham and Coventry, as well as Cardiff and Swansea, came over the hills to us. The droning of German aircraft was frequently heard at night and the criss cross of searchlights in those areas could be seen. On rare occasions, the staccato bursts of machine gun fire was heard and I remember only one occasion when tracers were used so that we saw the action of night fighters.
My family were small holders with about 30 acres of land, but we kept several pigs. About two hundred poultry had free run of the home farm and paddock. No closed poultry houses in those days. There were always at least four cows with usually three in milk at one time. Farm power was from two horses and when not in use on the farm, one at least was providing transport for local road works. We had fields in "hay" and every late June early July we cut around twenty acres of winter feed which had to be turned as it dried and then hauled into the barn. I learned very quickly how hard farm work was and resolved to do something else with my life if ever this war would end.
Paraffin lamps were used at night for doing my homework from school and our local "bobby" was very serious about blackout observance. Water came from a 40 feet deep well in the yard and was very reliable unless we had a drought or low rainfall when about August time we had to carry buckets about 3/4 mile. In 1944 I joined the Kington Squadron of the Air Training Corps, I forget the Squadron number, which brought me closer to the services, particularly the RAF. Things were looking brighter from 1944 and in May 45 was the anouncement that war in Europe was at an end. Having our own milk, butter, eggs and bacon on the farm meant that we were never short of food, but equally, we made a good contribution to food production. Naturally, all our surplusses in these staples were welcome in the town stores and quickly went onto the ration books of others.
We heard on the radio and read about the enormous sacrifices being made by others on befhalf of the British Isles and its population but it seemed so distant from us.

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