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This story was submitted to the people war Website by a volunteer from Tiverton Museum of Mid Devon Life on behalf of Gerald Frankpitt.

GERALD FRANKPITT

I was 11 at the start of the war. My father was a farmer and I had 1 brother and 3 sisters. My father owned a field which was nearly 24 acres in size! It was used as a hare racing field in Victorian times. In the war it was requisitioned as a POW camp.

Firstly there were Italians and later on Germans as well as displaced people e.g. Yugoslavians. The POWs worked on the land — they were all hard working except the Italians!!

I remember the Italians used to catch wild birds in a trap and eat them!

The Germans were so well disciplined — they almost ran the camp themselves.

I don’t remember ever being short of food, particularly as we lived on a farm. My father was a cattle dealer. He was too old to join up.

We had a bomb which dropped on one of our fields — it was an unexploded bomb and I believe it is there to this day! My son now runs the farm.

The only other experience we had of bombing as a family was my sister’s school in Exeter being bombed.

I also remember a broadcast from Lord Haw Haw when he said the Germans would bomb Tiverton!

I also remember being pulled up by the guards of the POW camp one day because they thought I might be a spy.

The other interesting story in Tiverton was the arrival of the Americans in town. One of them wanted to marry my sister but she resisted his advances.

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