大象传媒

A BOY鈥橲 WAR

My name is Roger Moulds. I was born in March 1936 at Worthing in Sussex. My father, Lawrence Frederick Moulds was a quantity surveyor with Worthing Town Council. My mother, Florence Phoebe, was a housewife. I had two older brothers, Christopher and Brian. Another brother, Geoffrey, was born in September 1939.
When war broke out I was only three and a half, but I remember my father telling myself and my two older brothers that we were at war with Germany. From then on, cowboys and Indians were forgotten, it was the British Bulldog versus the Hun. Being the smallest, I was usually the Hun and was knocked about quite a lot.
Of course, to young boys this was an adventure, but the fun soon started to go out of it. Gas masks arrived. The beach was mined and closed off with rolls of barbed wire. Sweets went 鈥榦n the ration鈥�. We found ourselves eating margarine or dripping on our bread, instead of butter. Always hungry, we used to chew dog biscuits, oxo cubes, acorns (once), and even modelling clay.
I remember one day watching from an upstairs bedroom an aerial battle between British and German planes. We cheered when we saw a German plane go down into the sea. The following morning, somehow the word got round that a Spitfire had crash landed just north of Worthing somewhere, and we all hiked off to see it. It was in the middle of a large flat field, nose down, tail in the air. A soldier guarding it told us that the pilot had climbed out and walked away.
Not long after that we all went off to High Salvington where a German Heinkel bomber had crashed, and I remember being lifted up so that I could see into the cockpit. I don鈥檛 know what I had expected to see, but there was nothing glamorous about it, and I felt sorry for the people who had been in it.
During this time we learned anti German rhymes which we picked up from our various friends. The ones I remember are:

Pounds, shillings and pence
Hitler fell over the fence.
He cut his ass on a lump of glass,
Pounds, shillings and pence.

Whistle while you work,
Snow White made a shirt,
Hitler wore it, Goebbels tore it,
Wasn鈥檛 he a twerp.

Ginger, he鈥檚 barmy
He went and joined the army.
He got knocked in with a bottle of gin,
He got knocked out by a bottle of stout,
Ginger, he鈥檚 barmy.

My father left Worthing Town Council and went to work for an organization called the C.R.E, which was based at Horsham. My understanding is that the C.R.E was a civilian engineering establishment run by the government, and I know that my father was initially involved in setting up defences 鈥� airfields, pill boxes, gun emplacements, tank traps etc. Later he became involved in the building of army camps ready for the D-Day landings, especially one at Rudgwick. We moved into rented accommodation at Eames House, Church Hill, Rudgwick. Even though we lived in the country and did not have to suffer the horrors of the Blitz, everyone鈥檚 life was centered around, and directed by, the war. My grandfather, Ernest Moulds, who had fought all through the First World war arrived one day. He was a gardener by trade, and had come to help my parents dig the garden up. 鈥楧ig for Victory鈥� was the slogan, and dig for victory we did. All the grass went, so therefore, did our football and cricket. As compensation my father found us a little cycle from somewhere 鈥� a child鈥檚 cycle which was described as a 鈥楩airy Cycle鈥�. We learned to ride by climbing on and falling off, with a competition to see how far one could go before falling off. In less than half a day we were competent cyclists who could even ride with no hands.
About this time, for some reason, I was sent back to Worthing to stay with my aunt and cousins for a few days. They lived in Northbrook road. They had a Morrison shelter set up in their dining room, and we all slept in it at night. I remember the first night when there was an air raid. The siren went off. Then you could hear the bombers coming from miles away, a deep, sinister droning noise. Then a nearby ack-ack gun started and I was really frightened. Suddenly the door shot open and granddad shot in and tried to scramble into the shelter which already held me, my grandmother, my aunt and my two cousins. 鈥楢re you alright Pop asked grandmamma?鈥� 鈥業 shall be if I can get my bloody arse in鈥�, he said. That was the one and only time I ever heard him swear.
Eventually I returned to Rudgwick. I learned that in my absence, two war correspondents had either stayed at our house, or visited it. Their names, as I recall, were Brian Meredith and Gerry Wilmot.
As the days went on, convoys of lorries and other army vehicles started to arrive in the village. There were a lot of Americans and Canadians.
My two elder brothers had been sent to school at Cranleigh to a school called Carn Brea which I believe to have been evacuated from Bromley 鈥榝or the Duration鈥�. They came out of school one day to be met by my uncle, John Wakefield. He was my mother鈥檚 elder brother and we called him Uncle Jack. He was a sergeant in the 17th-21st Lancers and had an army scout car. My two brothers rode home with him in the scout car. You can imagine the envy of their school mates as they climbed in and were driven off! I was attending Mrs Aspley鈥檚 kindergarten school in Rudgwick so I did not get a ride, but when they arrived home I was lifted in and allowed to look round. I could not keep my eyes off the bullets that were lying around. Uncle Jack stayed the night and then we did not see him again until after the war was over. He was later mentioned in despatches during the fighting on the Dutch / German border.
During this time, an aunt came to stay for a few days. I knew her as Aunty Edie. She had come to try and see her soldier fianc茅, who was based at the Rudgwick army camp. We took her to show her where the soldiers trained to see if she could spot him. Eventually he came marching along in a squad of soldiers and she saw him and waved to him and called his name, and then she just stood there crying. I suppose it was about May of 1944, and there I was, eight years old, holding her hand and saying 鈥楧on鈥檛 cry, aunty, grown-ups don鈥檛 cry鈥�.
More and more soldiers and vehicles were pouring into the village. We would sit on the edge of the road and count the transports to see which would be the biggest convoy. I went with my mother on the bus to Guildford one day 鈥� (single decker, no. 33) and suddenly there a big thud and the bus braked to a halt. My mother told me that a motor cycle despatch rider had collided with the bus. I asked if he was dead, and she said no, he just had a broken leg. I stood on the seat and saw the motor cyclist lying at the side of the road. I looked everywhere, but I couldn鈥檛 see his leg lying anywhere. I thought if you had a broken leg it would be broken right off from your body!
At breakfast one morning, my mother and father started arguing. It seems that late the night before there had been a loud knocking on our front door. When my father opened it, he found a Canadian soldier standing there, the worse for drink. He was clutching an onion, and demanding some bread and cheese to go with it. Father let him in and found him something to eat, and made some tea (no coffee in the house, not even Camp Coffee made from chicory). When my father thought the man was sober enough to return to camp, he sent him on his way. Mother thought drunken soldiers were a disgrace, and it was dangerous to let such men into the house. Father just said, 鈥楴ot as dangerous as where he is going,鈥� and that was the end of the argument.
Soon after that the village became very quiet. We heard on the radio that the D-Day landings had taken place. My brothers and I went down to the Camp where most of us youngsters used to wait for soldiers to come out. We would shout out 鈥楪ot any gum, chum?鈥� As often as not, chewing gum and pennies would be thrown at us, and there would be a scramble for the pickings. However, on this day the place was deserted.
Life went on. We searched the fields looking for Radio Location Paper. These days it is called 鈥榃indow鈥�, or 鈥楥haff鈥�. It consisted of lengths of tinfoil, copious amounts of which were thrown out of aircraft to try and deceive the new radar systems. We were forbidden to pick it up in case the Germans had poisoned it, but we tested it first by getting our mongrel dog Mike to sniff at it and hopefully lick it, first. It was about this time that Brian and I thought we had discovered a German Spy. In a field behind the village we discovered that someone was living in a tent. So we let the tent down and threw it and all the associated belongings over the hedge. Unfortunately we were spotted by the local post woman, whose tent it was, who reported it to our father. Good hidings were duly dished out and we were paraded before the post lady and ordered to apologise.
By this time I had become a good cyclist, and one day the village postmaster, Mr Humphries, phoned my mother and asked if I could take a telegram out as he had no one else to take it. I collected the telegram. 鈥楾here won鈥檛 be an answer鈥�, he said. (In those days a telegraph boy would deliver a telegram and wait to collect an answer if one was required). I took it to a house where a lady answered the door. She gave me a strange look, but said 鈥榙o you want an apple?鈥� I said I would. She went away and read the telegram. When she came back she handed me the apple and shut the door quickly. I felt guilty, but I did not know why. A few weeks later I delivered another telegram under similar circumstances. It was only a few years ago that it suddenly struck me that I had probably been delivering casualty telegrams, but was too young to realize what I was doing.
Flying bombs, or 鈥楧oodlebugs鈥�, started coming over. The locals reckoned that they came in from the south, veered right over the church and headed for London. Very little notice was taken of them as we did not consider ourselves to be a target. Then one day, at lunchtime one came over, the engine stopped, and the bomb crashed into a field opposite the house of one of our friends and exploded. Our friend John had just been made to leave the table to wash his hands when the bomb struck. All the dining room windows were blown in, and if he had been still sitting at table he would have been seriously, perhaps mortally, wounded.
Not far from us there was an airfield at a place called Dunsfold. The US air force were sending out bombers every day over Germany. Although it was several miles away, we could always hear the engines starting and warming up. Then they would fly off and gradually the noise would fade into the distance. One morning there was an almighty explosion, followed by a series of smaller explosions which I was told was ammunition going off. Two of the aircraft, with full bomb loads, had collided just after take off.
My best day was Sunday. We lived next door to the village butcher. His name was Mr Butcher. On Sunday mornings he made sausage meat in a great machine which was turned by an enormous handle. I was allowed to turn the handle while he fed the ingredients in. A great deal of herbs and other fillings went in to compensate for the lack of meat. Then we went off in his old brown Ford van, round the village. The broken horn on his van was replaced by him putting his arm out of the window, banging on the body work and shouting 鈥榞et out the bloody way鈥�. When we returned from the round he would present me with a parcel to take home, and then we would all breakfast on his truly delicious sausage meat.
Soon after that we moved back to Worthing, and I was sent to school at Goring Hall, a private preparatory school. There we all had the greatest present of all time 鈥� powdered drinking chocolate from the Canadian Government. It tasted so sweet and chocolaty, it was truly delicious. The bags went into our desks, and every few seconds we would surreptitiously lift the lid of the desk, push a forefinger into the bag, withdraw and have a lovely lick of the finger!
This was not the only treat, though. In Worthing there was a company called Luffs Sweet Factory. Before the war it used to make rock and boiled sweets, typical seaside confectionery. My mother and her mother 鈥� Nanny Wakefield, used to save up their sugar allowance, and when they had enough would take it along to Luffs. They would take it in during the morning, and in the afternoon receive it back, transformed into delicious sweets. We would suck the sweets, and in our best RAF voices say 鈥淚 say, bang on, old chap!鈥�
We had plenty of these little sayings such as 鈥淲izard Prang鈥�, 鈥淎chtung Spitfire鈥�, 鈥淒onner and Blitzen鈥�, 鈥淧ut that light out鈥�, 鈥淒on鈥檛 you know there鈥檚 a war on?鈥�, 鈥淲aste not, want not鈥�. Every day, no matter how old you were, your life was affected by the war. No one who has not been through such a war could understand the life. Every mouthful of food was counted. Clothes and shoes were darned and patched. I watched my mother, guarding the ration books as if they were the crown jewels. After every transaction, she would carefully examine the ration books to make sure that exactly the right amount of coupons had been either cut out or deleted.
Vehicles drove round without, or almost without, lights. Horses and horse drawn ploughs were taken out of retirement, trees cut down for wood for air frames. Every night black-out precautions were double checked as you wondered what horrors the coming night would bring (even in the country). Every morning you listened to the radio to find out who had 鈥榗opped it鈥� overnight. You knew the sound of every aircraft, knowing straight away whether it was friendly or enemy. If it was enemy, you hid. If it was friendly you ran out and gave the 鈥榯humbs up鈥�.
There was no television and 24 hour news. We were totally reliant on the newspapers, and more importantly, the wireless. Everyone sat around a radio at News time to hear what had been going on both in Europe and the Far East, cheering the good news, groaning and moaning at the bad. Gradually the news got better and better and one day we heard that Hitler was dead, and shortly after that the war in Europe ended. There was much joy, of course, but the war against Japan went on, with very bitter fighting being reported. Many people went to the cinema at least once a week, and the newsreels contained many reports from the battlefronts. One which we saw, however, was not from the war zone, but from a German concentration camp. The pictures were absolutely horrifying and the audience was quite stunned. We had been conditioned by our own propaganda to believe that the Germans were a nasty crowd given to machine gunning civilians and prisoners of war, but what we saw on the cinema screen that day was beyond anything that we had ever envisaged. After the treachery of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were considered a nasty lot and not many people were sorry at news of the atomic bomb raids or at pictures of the destruction that had been caused. Looking back now it seems horrific, but at the time everything was horrific and the view was that it had brought a quick end to the war, saved many allied lives and the Japanese had brought it on themselves and deserved it.

So ended World War 2. We had the usual street party. We lived in Thorn Road, Worthing then, just about 100 yards from the sea. But it was not until 1947 that the mines were cleared and the barbed wire removed and we could get down to the beach to play. Sweets were still 鈥榦n the ration鈥�, and remained so for a long time. The fighting had stopped, but the war rationing and commodity shortages continued through the austerity years that followed, well into the nineteen fifties.

We were a lucky family. My father鈥檚 work kept him out of hostilities. My uncle Jack came home safely, as did his brother, my uncle Bill (Royal Engineers), and my father鈥檚 two brothers uncle Perce and uncle Joe (both RAF). Many others were not lucky at all.

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