大象传媒

As a young boy I attended Luckwell Road School. I was in Miss Drewtt鈥檚 class; she was a very formidable lady!

One night there came the answer to a schoolboy鈥檚 prayer, when one of Hitler鈥檚 pilots destroyed the school with an oil bomb.

At the age of nine, with my brother, Brian aged five years; we were taken by steam train to Dartmouth and then onto Strete by motorbus. I have dim recollections of assembling in the village hall to be allocated to the people who were to look after us.

We went to live at Strete Barton with farmer Trant and his wife, two sons and the maid, Phyllis. The farmer and his wife had a flush toilet; the rest of us used a privy in the kitchen garden. The farm had its own bull, cows for milking and beef, pigs, chickens and ferrets for catching rabbits. Such was the production capacity that a butchers shop was maintained in Dartmouth.

On one occasion we had a real treat- a trip in the farmer鈥檚 motorcar to fetch Aunt Flo from Blackhawton to come to stay. On another, British troops gave us a ride in a Bren gun carrier-the officer came and turned us out and we had to a long walk back to the farm.

The farmer鈥檚 wife took Brian and me to church each Sunday morning; during the week we attended the village school-one class for infants and one for juniors. Each morning my brother and I had to get up at 4am to deliver milk in little cans, such as navvies carried, one pint skimmed here, one-pint full cream there.

The teacher took us to the reed beds to the rear of Slapton Sands for nature study. We gathered reeds and when they had dried we made baskets to be embroided with coloured raffia tapes.

I recall the man sailing from the beach in a wide circle to catch fish, which the villagers, who gathered on the shore, shared to supplement wartime diets. What with the sides of beef and pork, fish and clotted cream, my brother and I went away thin and came home round!

The hedgerows were full of flowers, nuts, crab apples and sloes. The farmer had a tractor with metal spiked wheels because of the shortage of rubber tyres.

Life in the village was much as it had been for hundreds of years: a close compact, self-contained community with the ability to absorb, and help young people like my brother and me.

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