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This story has been written onto the ´óÏó´«Ã½ People’s War site by Cornwall CSV Storygatherer, Martine Knight, on behalf of Pat van den Berg. Her story was given to the Trebah WW2 Video Archive, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund in 2004. The Trebah Garden Trust understands the terms and conditions of the site.

I was 13 when war broke out and living in Falmouth. My father was a Cornishman who served as a policeman in the Mets and had returned to Falmouth when he retired in his late 40’s. He’d served in WW1 and experienced Zeppelin raids in London so he was worried about us being bombed. That’s why we moved to Constantine, where my uncle was the policeman, and stayed there for the rest of the war.

Rural life at that time was quite primitive with few amenities. Everyone knew everyone else. There was no electric light and it cost 1/- return to Falmouth on the bus. The Cornish dialect was much more widely used and people grew a lot of their own fruit and veg. We ate a lot of rabbit! The diet was monotonous, but we didn’t go hungry.
When I left school I worked on the land for about a year and it was hard work.
There wasn’t much to do in the village so we went to church and chapel a lot.

The Dutch Navy was stationed at Ennis House in Mylor and that’s how I met my husband. I first saw him at a friends wedding. He was a wonderful man. He had been on a Dutch minesweeper, which escaped from Holland in May 1940, and they were met by a British destroyer, which escorted them to Chatham.

There were a lot of Americans stationed in the Falmouth area. They were very bold and used to ‘cut in’ on the dance floor. The blacks were stationed in Penryn and the whites in Falmouth. I’d only ever seen black people in films. I was once on a bus when a black sailor got on and asked permission to sit next to me. That showed how used they were to segregation. One of my friends married a white American from Kentucky and she had the marriage annulled because she knew she couldn’t go back there and treat the blacks like dirt.

Just before D-Day I was walking up Dracaena Avenue and it was full of American troops who all whistled and cat-called to me. I was blushing furiously, but of course I had no idea what they were going off to face.

I married in 1943 and friends gave me clothing coupons to get my outfit together. A friend made our cake, but she didn’t have any almond icing so my aunt sent that and some cake decorations, but they didn’t arrive until 2 days after the wedding!

There were a few German PoW’s working around Constantine. I used to stick my tongue out to them and they’d make rude hand signals back.

I used to help the local butchers’ son to deliver to Port Navas and once we were machine-gunned. We were lucky not to be hit, but I don’t think we really appreciated the danger at that age.

Video details CWS110804 12:40:02 to 13:05:41

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