大象传媒

I was an apprentice hairdresser in a shop in Beaminster, where I lived.
I was 11 when the War started, and I was 16 or 17 when it finished.

My father was a Regimental Sergeant Major in the 4th Dorsets. He was in the Territorial Service and he and three of my brothers were called up two weeks before war broke out, so they left home then. By the time the war finished the three brothers had met young ladies and got married and went their different ways.

My mother had two (evacuees) boys to start with and then one boy was rather homesick so his parents took him back and one boy stayed and then his sister came and stayed as well. My sister still wrote to Mimi, who was the girl and she was gone to New Zealand by then and I suppose she鈥檚 still alive and we kept contact with her, and we used to visit and it was like an extension to the family.

Beaminster was full of troops, right from the start of the war. First English troops came, then they would move off and another lot come in and I鈥檝e got an autograph with lots of signatures in, right up to the end of war, when the Americans came in 1943. They were gone by 1945 then German and Italian prisoners came, and took over the camps where the soldiers were.

We weren鈥檛 affected badly by the bombing in Beaminster. We had a bomb dropped at Tunnel Road and some cows were killed. Then another night some bombs were dropped, out in the fields I believe, so we weren鈥檛 affected badly. A German plane came down the other side of the tunnel and there鈥檚 been quite a story about that since the war and the men were buried at first in the churchyard then they were taken to the German cemetery in Staffordshire.

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