大象传媒

Interviewees : Mr Rex & Mrs Margaret Trevett
Date of Birth (Rex Trevett) 9.9.1933

R: My first memories of the war are of my parents having a large house in St. Andrew鈥檚 Road. Father was an ARP warden, and we had to turn the four cellars underneath the old Georgian house into an air raid shelter for ourselves and an air raid shelter for the wardens and anybody in the road who wanted to come and share it. Nobody ever did, and I think we only went downstairs once - into the shelter once. So one wonders how many times people went into air raid shelters during the war.
M: We had one dug in our garden, in the lawn. We used it about once or twice and then winter came and it filled with water, and that was the end of that
R: As for rationing, things went back to a sort of a swap/bartering culture. Money never changed hands. Father was a business man in Bridport. He ran a hairdressing shop, with his brother - two hairdressing shops. And they were both lovers of the sea, and Father and Uncle had a sailing boat and a motor boat, but they weren鈥檛 allowed to use either during the war. Father was allowed to take his rowing boat and put out nets in the sea. Fifty metres of net which he anchored, with corks at the top and weights at the bottom. And you鈥檇 put it out in the evening, and you鈥檇 go down at the crack of dawn the next day, and it would be, if you were lucky, full of fish. All sorts, mackerel, conger eel, everything. Sea salmon, which you weren鈥檛 allowed to catch. And when we got home we would, Mother would take what she wanted, and Father would say 鈥楻ight!鈥�. And I鈥檇 go up, knocking on the doors with this great basket and (They鈥檇 say) 鈥極h, yes, I鈥檒l have a .... And I would get an occasional sweet coupon, from elderly people who didn鈥檛 have such a sweet tooth as I. And I remember all of that. I remember queuing up in Woolworth's when the first sweets arrived after the war. When it came off the rationing.
M: I did quite well during the war, because my father and mother had a pub, which is now the Tanners, which was then the White Lion, and the American officers were billeted in a big white house across the road. it was always very busy, with American soldiers, and they would bring sweets in and lollipops and I did quite well. We used to live on lots of rabbits. And the garden was full of vegetables. We used to keep chickens in the skittle alley at the back. Nobody played skittles in those days, and all the gardens were dug up for vegetables.
R: No men about you see. They were all in the war. Father was in the First World War, and my uncle. And so they - Father was in the ARP and Uncle was in the Home Guard. And there was nobody ...
M: My dad was in the Home Guard
R: And there was nobody between eighteen or whatever age you went in, except one or two of the people in the sort of jobs that were reserved.
M: Well, with clothes rationing, we all made our own clothes. I mean, I grew up making my own. We used to make do and mend.
R: There were all sorts of hand-me-downs, which is not very good with shoes really, because a shoe gets used to your foot ...
M: I don鈥檛 remember not having shoes although there was an allocation of shoes for youngsters perhaps. I can鈥檛 seem to remember not having shoes.
M: You weren鈥檛 allowed to go on the beaches. At Burton Bradstock there were tank traps on the beach. You鈥檇 go down to the beach and tank traps and barbed wire all along.
R: Father was allowed to go out with his boat, because he was supplying food to all sorts of people! But we weren鈥檛 allowed to go more than two hundred metres off in case we talked to U-Boats - they might have wanted the fish! I suppose it was easier to fish from Fathers little boat than it was from a U-boat! So there were those sort of restrictions. But there were no restrictions around the town.
M: But there were no signposts. All the signposts were taken down, so you had to know your way around.
R: One of my outstanding memories of the war was standing with Father on the bridge that goes across the harbour from one side to the other - standing on there and two planes came in from the sea and Father said 鈥� Ooh, look. Two Spitfires鈥�, and as they went over they were Messerschmidt 109s and as we looked with horror they went in over Bridport. And one went one way and one went the other and we saw and heard the bombs fall. And that was the day the East Street Car Park was made. It destroyed all the houses there
M: Those houses all belonged to my grandmother!
R: And Father being in the ARP he said 鈥楻ight! Come on!鈥�. I had a tiny bike with a fixed-wheel thing, and Father had a, sort of, a proper bike, and he held my hand and pulled - and I had to keep my feet away from the pedals, and we broke the World Speed Record for cycling from West Bay to Bridport. And by the time he got down to halfway up South Street, the whole street was a sheet of glass - or so it seemed to me at that stage. And there was an unexploded bomb in - I think that was the Nat West Bank, in the doorway. And it had knocked off Northover & Gilbert鈥檚 ... knocked off the chimney, and gone into the bank across the road. And so Father was absorbed with his ARP duties, and said 鈥楪o home鈥� so I had to go home.
M: I used to teach the evacuees at Sunday School. There were a lot of them and they lived in the Grove School at the bottom of East Street. And they all used to come to St Mary鈥檚. They were all right. They were boisterous, I wasn鈥檛 much older than they were at the time. I would have been about twelvish I suppose, and would do bits with some of the ones who were about the same age as me. I got on all right with them. They were like foreigners to me, because I鈥檇 always been living in Bridport , and (these were) real Cockney hard cases.
R: We had two Americans billeted with us. Bill and Janny(?) - and they both died on Omaha Beach. And we heard from their families about a year later to say 鈥楾hank you鈥� for putting them up.
M: Most of the ones we knew were killed. We kept in contact with one, who married a Bridport girl, who came back after the war, but the rest of them, they were killed. It鈥檚 sad, very sad. We got to know them really well in the time that they were here because they were in and out all the time. A a lot of the time I lived with my grandmother, because my parents were busy with the pub, and they were in and out all day long. So that鈥檚 how we got to know them so well.
R: We used to listen to the radio
M: Yes all the time. We used to watch - er listen!, to the news, and we had a big map up on the wall, showing where the troops were going, and the advances were made.
R: I can remember being in the living room when the announcement was made that the 鈥楬ood鈥� was sunk, and highlights in the war, like that.
R: Father and Uncle ran a hairdressing business and in those days, in Bridport, all hairdressers were men. And in those days Father & Uncle wore morning suits and we had a boy who went out to the pavement, in a button suit, and opened ladies鈥� cars鈥� doors, so they could come into the shop. And we had five - our main hairdressing salon - there were five, and Father and Uncle - six men. And they all went to the war. So all of a sudden our workforce was absolutely decimated. The six men who were the hairdressers were gone! And amazingly none of them were killed. They all came back to work for us.
So they had to find ladies who would come in and be trained. And it was a three year apprenticeship. And there was nobody, with all these Bridport ladies wanting their hair done, how do you do it? There were only my father and my uncle, who were too old to go to the war. So our business was very much affected. There was this very quick training of ladies, and not doing it in three years, but probably doing it in three weeks. Well, certainly helping and shampooing and doing all that sort of thing that you did when you were an apprentice. I was apprenticed after the war. And that made a tremendous difference to us, whereas she, with the 鈥榃hite Lion鈥�, they were booming.
M: It was very very busy. I can ...
R: With all the forces being billeted across the road it was boom time there.
M: I knew my grandmother used to make home-made wine and things like that.
R: And cider I expect.
M: I can remember going out to all the local farms and buying cider. I can remember preparing for D-Day and the American troops were lined up all along West Street, all in front of the 鈥榃hite Lion鈥� They were going to Weymouth. I can remember them hanging about and it was wet and damp. I can see her now, going out with jugs of her elderberry wine and giving them glasses of wine and keeping them warm. Because it was very wet I remember. I can still see them - I watched out of the bedroom window.
R: I think that the plane that did the bombing was an Me 109. I can see it like it was yesterday. Petrifying! When they went over. We were all right down there, at West Bay but Mother and my sister were at home. We got bombed quite a bit at the house because they either aimed for Gundry鈥檚 or for the railway station. We lived a hundred yards from the railway station. And the bombs always landed nearer us than they did to the railway station. The wonderful thing about the bombing was that every huge hole that got left filled up with water, and we got the most wonderful tadpoles! We鈥檇 go down with a jar and a net. And the railway line still went to West Bay at that stage. Well the line was there. I don鈥檛 know whether the trains went to that - I have no recollection of the trains doing it during the war.
M: Bridport Station was thriving during the war. ... It was very busy. Nobody had cars.
R: I remember the ARP things because Father was the sort of street sergeant. And he had his white helmet with sergeant鈥檚 stripes on it. And whenever the air raid sirens went, on went the helmet and Father was out, in the road.
M: I can remember Dad being away quite a lot of the night times, because of the Home Guard duties. But I never really knew what he did.
R: Father said that if the Germans drove down St. Andrew鈥檚 Road he would be up in the tree with his twelve bore and he鈥檇 get as many as he could before they got him. And that scared me to death really. Father sitting up in a bare tree with a twelve bore that wasn鈥檛 terribly efficient at that range some twenty yards from the road. He meant it in theory, but whether he would have practised it from the top of the tree I don鈥檛 know. I think probably he would have sat in the tree and shot at Germans in vehicles ... he wasn鈥檛 that daft. But I鈥檓 quite sure he would have done something similar to that. I can remember Mother saying 鈥業 wish Father wouldn鈥檛 say these things.
M: My father was machine-gunned. What used to happen was the Germans would come in on these sorties, and then as they were going back out they used to empty whatever they鈥檇 got left when they saw people. And he was in the garage one day and they saw him working outside and they tried to machine-gun him. He dived inside - they missed him luckily. But that was as they were going back out to sea.
R: We had our cousins and our aunt and uncle come to live with us when they thought that Hitler was going to invade up the Chesil Beach. There were two old, I would imagine, Royal Naval guns, battleship guns, one ion front of Uncle and Aunties鈥� house and the other one just a bit higher up - they looked out towards Bournemouth. And they took over Uncle and Aunties鈥� bungalow - God when we looked at it after the war, when we went back in their - trashed as the Americans would say. There was nothing left.
- Continued

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