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This story was submitted to the People’ War by a volunteer from The Chepstow Society on behalf of Dorothy Hallett and has been added to the site with her permission. Dorothy Hallett fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

IINTRODUCTION

My ‘war stories’ are not about ‘rationing’ and ‘war work’, those things affected the adults and living in the country the ‘real’ war seemed to onl;y affect us ‘by chance’ - and I think this is what my stories say. The food rationing was handled by my mother - and again living in the country we had a garden, chickens and what the country offered - plenty at harvest-time, which was all preserved for the winter. But the chance encounters with the ‘real’ war and the beginnings of a feeling of FEAR which the ‘LONE GERMAN PLANE’ (Story 1) engendered - because I knew that he could have killed us - also the ‘STICK OF BOMBS’(Story 2) - one of these bombs could have hit our house - and the sight of ‘AVONMOUTH ON FIRE’(Story 3) - it was a real fire and that people must have been killed.

Incidentally, my father being a gardener, got the job of turning the land around the R.O. Factory in Newport to a vegetable garden(with pigs) to feed the canteen!! Which he did!!!

(1) THE LONE GERMAN PLANE

Between 1938 and 1943 we lived - first of all - in the Gardener’s Cottage at Boughspring House and then at Avenue Lodge at the beginning of Tidenham Chase - so being ‘out in the country’ the war only seemed to affect us indirectly.

We caught the bus(when there was one - on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays) into Chepstow at the point where the lane from Boughspring meets the start of Tidenham Chase opposite Dennel Hill gates. While waiting for a bus with my mother on one occasion, we were alarmed that the plane we could hear overhead was not ‘ONE OF OURS’ - we all knew the sound of different engines! As it was flying very low we could see the crosses on the wings and realised that it really was a GERMAN and we could also see the pilot inside it! My mother’s reaction was swift and immediate - fearing that he would kill us she threw me into the grass verge at the side of the land and covered me with her own body. To our intense relief nothing happened and he flew on - this to our great surprise too.

At that moment I learned two things - my mother had put her life in danger for me and that all Germans could not be bad as he could have killed us. We learned later that he had machine-gunned the Army Apprentices’ Camp at Beachley - a military target.

(2) THE SPARE ‘STICK OF BOMBS’

A German bomber obviously had some bombs he had to ‘get rid of’ and so dropped them in the fields, missing all the farms and cottages near where we lived at the bottom end of Tidenham Chase.

In the morning, my brother and I, with many other children from the cottages nearby, went out to inspect the craters and to collect trophies - pieces of shrapnel - to take home to our mothers.

My mother’s reaction was not what we expected - she was horrified - and told us to take them out of the house and back to where we had found them!

I suppose - being children - we found it exciting - but she knew the real meaning of the horror and violence behind it.

(3) SEEING AVONMOUTH ON FIRE

From ‘Avenue Lodge’, where we lived for a part of the war, we had a very good view of the Severn and Avonmouth, the docks and oil storage depot - prime targets for the German bombers. When they were bombed the fires were quite spectacular and I can remember going out at night with my father to see them, and being amazed that he was totally unafraid - he had survived the 1914-18 war, including the Battle of the Somme, as an infantry soldier - so he believed in FATE(if a bomb is for you - you will have it!!).

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