大象传媒

Interviewee : Mr Don England Date of Birth 29.9.1927

Well, my father was in the Flying Corps in the First World War, and he was an airframe fitter at Yeovilton aircraft factory, so the first effect to us was that Dad got called up. he was called up in the Air Force as a Reserve. The he was involved in an air accident about six months after he was called up, so he was demobilised as unfit after about ten months. He had a 46% pension, which was about eleven and sixpence a week, so the war had devastating effects on us because Mother used to have half a crown a week from the British Legion for groceries and half a crown a week from a local charity. There was five of us kids at home and everything was scarce and that was hard going.
Three shillings a week rent. And mother used to do some braiding, she used to go on a farm milking and all sorts. She used to get us ready for school eight o'clock in the morning and then before that she'd gone and done a couple of hours milking on the farm. The when we'd get home - we'd walk to Bridport to school. We went to the General School in Bridport so we used to walk to and fro every day. When we got home Mother was never there because she was out milking, Dad used to cut us a sandwich or something, There was no running water. There was a well at Shipton. There was a group of houses where we lived and there was about eight houses and one well, so we always used to go and draw our water from the well. There was no sewerage. there was no electricity nor anything else.

Father got hit on the head with a propellor from an aircraft. What they were doing, they were laying Verey lights on runways, and they were in a vehicle and an aircraft landed on them - crash-landed on them. So he never really - he used to do odd jobs, but he never did a days' work afterwards. It was all devastating. And as an eleven-year-old I used to go round to these Army places with a pushchair, full of stuff from the local pub and sell it. I used to go round every night and push it down to a local farm and across Bullsburrow where the guns were. I would go all the way round and then the lady in the pub used to give me a penny. I dunno, I'd perhaps take ten or fifteen shillings or something like that.
It was all a bit of a farce really, the Home Guard, half of them used to go out on North Hill on night watch, and they took their jars of cider with them you know, and if anybody would've come they wouldn't have seen them! They had wooden guns, they had about two of the old First World War guns, and the rest was wooden, wooden guns.
When we lived in the village, as kids we never had bicycles. You know, a bicycle was a bit of a luxury really, so we never had it. So you tended to spend your time in the village. You played and everything else, but holiday times most kids helped on the farm or worked on the farm, with different jobs at different times, you know. Sheep dipping and hoeing and harvesting and apple picking, and everything else.
I worked for a fellow named Crabb, as a nipper, down at Walditch and I can remember one day a gang of us boys went from Shipton down to Walditch to help him with hay making, and he had some German p.o.w's there. And he turned around to one of the boys and said 'Well, one of these Germans is worth any three of you buggers!' he said, 'and I wouldn't employ an Englishman after employing a German'. So nobody ever went there after. ... Most of them would do a hard days work because they were getting fed, and they would get a pint of cider, that sort of thing, you know, so it paid them to get in there, get stuck in.

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