大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by volunteer from The Chepstow Society on behalf of Keith Underwood and has been added to the site with his permission. Kieth Underwood fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Continues from contribution ID 4124747

A further instance of the apparent lack of concern for our whereabouts was my trek on foot to Beachley on my own at the tender age of five or six. Since we often walked to Beachley, I knew the road and, thankfully, there was apparently very little traffic, since I was not stopped nor picked up by anyone recognising me. I would have had to pass Beachley Post Office, which was then at the side of the Three Salmons and run by Arthur James鈥� sister, Mrs Edwards, but I clearly escaped notice. The first contact I recall was when I reached the Beachley Oaks. An officer coming from the Officers鈥� Mess asked me where I was going and who my father was. He then walked with me right over to the cliffs on Beachley Point, near the hospital, where my father was playing golf with some NCOs and officers. He was not well pleased, since there may well have been a reprimand, but at any rate it put him on the spot in front of the others. I do not remember how I got home, nor in what state we found my poor mother. I never ever remember them arguing or rowing, but I daresay words were said!

The road to Beachley always had a great attraction and many of its landmarks are still there. The late Mary Clist鈥檚 tarred wooden bungalow, beyond which was an iron stile in the old iron estate fence, apparently even then leading nowhere. A Scots pine grew alongside it. Its branches shaped by the wind from the river. The walk was always accompanied by the music of the wind in the telegraph wires - a very early memory. The greatest walk was by all the families from Penn, on a bitter, icy day, with the road covered in thick, packed ice. We were all going to the hospital for immunisation against diphtheria(?). The smell of metholated spirits always brings back that occasion!

As I have said, Penn Village was its own community, depending for its survival on the Camp, where there were often entertainments in the camp theatre. Some families stayed there for most of the duration of the War, but others moved on and there was, in fact, a great deal of coming and going. My parents were friends with the Bradshaws, whose daughter later married into the Watts family. My mother and Mrs Bradshaw were great friends and shared a social life, either on shopping trips into Chepstow, or to Newport and Gloucester. They were also involved with the Wives鈥� Club, although my mother was not a typical Army wife. A link between the two families probably grew because the Bradshaws came from Gravesend and knew Dartford.

At Christmas we seemed to spend the holiday period in each others houses, which were festooned with the old style paper chains and Paul Jones garlands. We had kept ours from before the War and, each year the case was brought down, the chains dusted off and put up. Bells and spheres hung at intersections, every room becoming an absolute death trap in modern terms. But for us it was a magic time and the War a long way off. One year the secret that was kept, oh so well, was a small Christmas
tree! It was kept locked in the small back bedroom but, being a nosey child, I had had a glimpse through the keyhole! On another occasion my father and a friend were making something out in the scullery, but I was not allowed to see what was going on! This time they were successful, so it came as a great delight to find at Christmas that it was a huge toy fort, complete with a working portcullis! I had toys from before the War, including toy soldiers in their boxes, but the shortage of new toys gradually became a problem. It was solved by the fathers making them in the workshops at the camp. An only child is usually possessive, so I was not pleased to find toy soldiers and other items disappearing. My father was taking them up to the workshops where they became prototypes in what became an industry! Soldiers, toy ones that is, were cast in lead and painted and boxed up. Then came Spitfires and guns. My father鈥檚 speciality was in making model guns on the lathe and he was still doing this at Beachley, shortly before his death in 1978. Wooden toys were not a problem for the Carpenters鈥� Shop under Jimmy James (who settled with his wife and three daughters in Bulwark, but no relation to Arthur James鈥� family). Dolls were made by the mothers and I vividly recall my intense interest in the process. I became my mother鈥檚 helping hand and set to making my own version of these cloth figures. The place was full of kapok and thread. The variety of toys and games that came out of the workshops was astonishing, so our stockings were far from empty.

Books were very much a part of my life, partly because of my mother鈥檚 interest in reading (as an adolescent I would later read the same books as her, collections from the Herries Chronicles), but also because my two cousins, sisters, Lili and Vera, worked in the Temple Press at Letchworth. Without really knowing what they were sending (it was probably a matter of what was available and surplus, I suppose), I received some marvellous books throughout the War, many of them in the Everyman series - which I still have. I also still have the larger books and annuals that I was given then. In Gloucester, in the alley known as College Court, there was a second-hand bookshop which we frequented. It was here that I found a prewar copy of 鈥淩obinson Crusoe鈥�, with embossed and coloured hard cover - which I also still have.

Influential in my life were the illustrated history of England series that you could buy in Woolworths. Its half a dozen small books covered all periods from prehistoric to modern times and were packed with pen drawings and concise historical outlines. I always relate the buying of these periodically with visits to Gloucester - and the Cathedral, which left me spell-bound. It is astonishing that all this was happening while the War was going on and Bristol was enduring its blitz. I never ever recall an air-raid nor any panic.

An essential influence in most people鈥檚 lives was the cinema. Here everyone could escape what was going on, except for the Gaumont British News that brought carefully censored reality to the notice.

Chepstow has suffered many distasters, but none instigated by Hitler. Everything worthwhile in the Town that has disappeared since the War has been the result of thoughtless, even unthinking, blinkered action on the part of politicians and planners. A case in point was the Cinema, the good old Gaumont, that provided us with a warm and comforting home from home, where our dreams could be realised and where we could all meet together, from Bulwark, Sedbury and anywhere close enough to be able to get home again after the performance. The queues for the stalls lined up in all weathers under the arch in the narrow Station Road. The queue for the circle was allowed to wait in the wind tunnel that was the entrance to the back of the Beaufort Hotel. After the last performance everyone streamed out to their respective bus stops, hoping to crowd onto the last bus (people were often left behind). The fish and chip shops were the last port of call before going home - in Beaufort Square and Church Street. I seem to remember eating spam fritters on one occasion, flavoured with bay!

To walk out of the cinema after some particular epic was to be the hero of the moment! 鈥淧ut your raincoat on properly!鈥� my mother would say, when in fact I was using it as a cloak or an Indian鈥檚 feather headdress, walking out into the street playing the part of Errol Flynn, or whoever. Strange that the colours outside always seemed to be more enhanced! Whatever we saw became a game to be painstakingly carved and painted to be sailed on the 鈥淪treams鈥� (the rhines on Tallards Marsh) and model towns and militiary installations were constructed, to be severely 鈥渂ombed鈥� with lumps of mud and stones! Very few boys ever volunteered to be German when we had more physical games! But I must confess I liked their uniforms!

Army children were occasionally taken up to the Camp to watch films in the Camp cinema, no doubt run by the AKC. I recall the scrubbed floors that exuded a faint aroma of disinfectant. The films we saw were often geographical, sometimes of Canada and the rest of the Empire. The most exciting was Errol Flynn in the 鈥淪ea Hawk鈥�!

Television of course was non-existent, but I had had the privilege of watching it before the War extinguished the service. One of my uncles, Uncle Fred, was known for his socialism and union activity. The fact that he was the only one with a decently well-paid job, his own house, car and caravan used to cause my father (a loyalist, soldier and conservative) some problems, but they were great friends. I found it fascinating to sit in the dark and watch the black and white images flicker across the screen, recalling the Alexandra Palace mast. His wife was Aunt Jess, my mother鈥檚 sister, and she often lived with us during the War, with my grandmother, as a respite from the raids over North Kent. She came with her dog, my chum Gyp. I was always asking her where the television set was! Uncle Fred spent much of the War on secret radar work in Scotland.

The major entertainment for us children was the Camp Christmas Party, held in the NAAFI. We were taken by bus and, arriving, would go in through the billiard room, whose sacred tables were covered up and used to keep the coats on. Immediately detaching ourselves from our parents, we would make a bee-line for the closed door of the dining hall to see the long lines of tables decked with plates, cutlery and all the goodies yet to come. The cookhouse did us proud and somehow found the ingredients for cakes and jellies. I seem to remember that the cooks had a vivid sense of colour, especially with green icing! Where they got the sugar from one daren鈥檛 ask!

Often sent away with a flea in our ear, we would rush across the billiard room, through the gathered arrivals, to the opposite side of the room and in the cinema hall where a certain amount of pandemonium reigned. Once off the hook, we boys used to rush around like banshees, excited by the occasion. The girls always seemed more remote and ladylike, usually impeded by their best dresses and carefully combed hair. The three Carey girls were always beautifully turned out, as were the three James girls, almost in competition! It was as if Violet Elizabeth Bott was alive and well. Bearing in mind that a child鈥檚 behaviour could have some effect on a father鈥檚 promotion prospects, I wonder my father got as far as he did! However, he was invariably Father Christmas and so probably had some clout with the Regimental Sergeant Major! At the end of the Hall was the stage, for this was also the camp theatre. On it in the centre was a huge Christmas tree (no doubt from the plantations on the Point!), beautifully decorated. On either side were the presents in heaps and sacks. After we had been quietened down and led to the grand tea in the dining room, we trooped back into the cinema for the prizegiving. Every child received something worth having, although there were the inevitable petty jealousies over some other child鈥檚 gift. My father鈥檚 wedding ring was always a giveaway, but I still retained my belief in Father Christmas, although, when the time came, there were tears before bedtime!

My mother, having been in service, was a practised housewife and our home was well run. When she moved into the house we had little of our own furniture. This was gradually obtained from Jays Furniture Store that stood on the far side of Newport Bridge, on the left. The radio and other electrical equipment usually came from SER Beard鈥檚, since Mr. Beard and my father knew each other. My mother never ever used the issue pots and pans that were cast iron black things of some weight. These were consigned to a high cupboard in my bedroom, while she used aluminium pans. The walk-in pantry was always chock full of produce of one kind or another, a great deal of it prepared and preserved by her. As a soldier, my father received his own rations, especially meat and sugar. She shopped at the families鈥� NAAFI shop in the Camp, Venn鈥檚 grocery store at Sedbury (now the butcher鈥檚) and at the Golden Five Store. We always seemed to have good meals and I don鈥檛 recall going short. The milk was delivered on foot by Mr. Smith who kept Penn Farm. His daughter-in-law has just told me that they still had the original cans and measures before they moved to Wyebank. If you ran out of milk, you merely took a can down to the farm for some more. It was straight from the cow, after cooling.

Sweets, however, were a bit of a problem and there were several experimental disasters, all of which my father and I ate! There were, of course, numerous recipes suggested by the Ministry of Food for housewives to try and she had a go at most of them. The Wives鈥� Club also had various sessions aimed at helping the women cope. It was a kind of Army wives鈥� WI run by the officers鈥� and NCO鈥檚 wives. They instigated most of the projects, including dollmaking..

I started school on June 27th 1939 at the Army Garrison School, Pennsylvania Village, the ex-shipyard/Army hut in King Alfred鈥檚 Road that is now the Sedbury and Beachley Village Hall, but was built at the end of a railway siding in about 1917, probably as part of the building of the Village itself.

The southern part鈥檚 windows had no casements, but were closed by wooden shutters. This was the covered playground and exercise yard. The upper and larger part of the building was again divisible into two classrooms by a big, folding partition. The walls were boarded, as was the roof which was exposed to the rafters. On the roof were four (?) big conical roof ventilators. At the top end were the toilets. A corridor ran down the western side of the building - which was also sandbagged. The window panes were taped criss-cross fashion. There was a central heating system operated from the central boiler room, next to the headmistress鈥檚 room. At the front was grass and at the back a small yard.

It was situated, then, surrounded by fields. An old hollow oak that still survives was a favourite playing place. Opposite were the grass tennis courts, surrounded by tall wire mesh fences. It had a covered area for shelter. We sometimes went through the iron gate to pick daisies for daisy chains. The courts were part of the Army families鈥� facilities attached to the Warrant Officers鈥� and Sergeants鈥� Mess at Sedbury (now used by Bertopak, near the Post Office).

My early interest in plants led me to notice that chickory and mallow grew in the cracks of the stone kerbs of the road.

The Headmistress was Mrs Dennis and she was not the ogre we had been led to believe! She was a Queen鈥檚 Army Schoolmistress and had been Miss Edith Lilian Round. She married WOI AE Dennis MM AEC on January 2nd 1940, his first wife having died tragically the previous March, although I have no memory of any event that may have marked the event.
My teacher was Miss Chalker, also a Queen鈥檚 Army Schoolmistress, whom I liked very much. She lived in a house at the Tubular. At the time I did not know that her report on me, when I was due to move to the Junior Mixed School in the Hall of the Warrant Officers鈥� and Sergeants鈥� Mess, was to read, 鈥淜eith is very good at Reading and all Handwork subjects, but his Arithmetic is below average. His conduct is not very good.鈥� None of this surprises me now! The date was July 23rd 1942.

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