大象传媒

as a little boy growing up during the war i all seemed tremendous fun. Our aeroplanes were in the sky over Hadleigh, rarely did we see German aircraft and to me British aircraft were beautiful whereas German aircraft were black angular and therefore nasty. This attitude was reflected in the cowboy films we saw in the local cinema, The Palace Hadleigh. Where the good-guys wore white hats, whereas the baddies wore black ones! my father was in the Observer Corps, later the Royal Observer Corps. The local observer Corps Post was on the rise of the hill just outside the present school gates. It reported to the Colchester sector. My friends and I love to go to the observer post where probably we were better at spotting the various aircraft and their positioning than the relatively elderly observer Corps members. most little boys were keen on model aircraft and built them so became quite expert. later on in 1943 when the Americans built Raydon airfield the real challenge was to aquire part of the ammunition belt, live rounds and all, which we did. to make a bandolier like Che guevara! The headteacher at my primary school was insistant that we did not wear our ammunition in the classroom! But it did mean that every little boy knew the differences of every type of ammunition, which stood me in good stead later when I joined the R.A.F. The present Buyrights Store was called the Mob stores which I believe stood for the Ministry Ordinance Branch, where army vehicles which came to Hadleigh by rail were serviced and then returned to the front line. I lived opposite the Railway station and could invariably hear them being loaded and driven off down to the Mob stores. Of corse this meant that there were soldiers about which was thrilling to a little boy. From about 1943 onwards the skies over Suffolk were gradually filled as the daylight raids on germany mounted by the U.S airforce assembled. So the sky seemed to have more and more aircraft circling round and sometimes you could count three or four hundred B17 bombers. who were joined by their fighters and then all went off together to "win the war" the R.A.F flew at night and used different tactics. To me there was no doubt that we were going to win the war principally because Mr Churchill said so! we would congregate around the "wireless" when it became known that Mr Churchill was going to speak which inevitably was inspirational. There was a tremendous feeling of everyone in Hadleigh making an effort for the war. we had a warships week, a wings for victory week, there was various army activities too. You could knock a nail in Hitlers coffin at a penny a time in one of the shops in the centre of Hadleigh where somebody had made a coffin shaped piece of wood, which bristled with nails after a while. All the cast iron railings were taken from the town. it subsequently emerged that this metal could not be used but it gave you the feeling that everything was being sacrificed to win the war!
Although food was short this never seemed to be a real problem in the countryside. There was obviously a "black market" in cigarettes and others "essentials" but by and large the average person ate quite well if a little frugally. One particular incident was when a Ju88 supposedly bombed the station road primary school where the childrens contribution to the war effort was to keep pigs! it was said these died of shock and had to be taken away for burial in reality they were butchered and we all "ate quite well"
Early in the war we had evacuees from London coming to Hadleigh and these were considered to be quite foreign and rough. Mostly they were from the east end and the docks area and were very quick witted which meant that they were more than a match for us rather slower suffolk boys! what we did not make the distinction of was between children who had nothing before they came and children who lost everything so we weren't necissarily very kind! many evacuees stayed and settled down in rural suffolk. my mother was the "billiting officer" for the evacuees, I suspect primarily because we lived opposite the station where the children were dumped. at the same time as the bombs were dropped suposedly on the school, another of these bombs exploded in the garden of Toppesfield mill house where marks of the shrapnel can still be seen on the side wall, a piece of shrapnel killed Mrs Hall who was the only person in Hadleigh to be killed by direct enemy action.
the defences in and around Hadleigh were horizontal firing mortars, were dragons teeth i-section girder and concrete cheeses all ready to be moved into place if the german tanks came and occasionally there were practices. also around the town were half metre square pieces of metal painted yellow on top and mounted on posts. These were to detect the presence of gas where the yellow turned to green. of course everyone carried a gas mask and if you went to school without one you were sent home to get it and interviewed by the head!

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