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This story has been written onto the ´óÏó´«Ã½ People’s War site by Cornwall CSV Storygatherer, Martine Knight, on behalf of Sam Real. His story was given to the Trebah WW2 Video Archive, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund in 2004. The Trebah Garden Trust understands the terms and conditions of the site.

I left school in September 1942 and went to work in the ARC (Amalgamated Roadstone Company) quarry at Porthoustock. Stone from there was used to build airfields in Cornwall and farther afield. I was a pneumatic drill worker. From there we could see right into Falmouth Bay and it was very busy.
There was also a group of German and Italian PoW’s working there. We didn’t trust the Italians much. They used to climb the cliffs carrying big metal buckets and rob the gulls’ eggs to eat.
One of the German PoW’s was an expert chippie and made all the butts for the quarry lorries although the man in charge of him, Jack Curnow, nicknamed Pudding, took most of the credit for his handiwork.

The area was full of troops — British and Yanks. The DCLI was in Helston as was the East Lancs.

There were often dogfights over the area and one day we saw a parachute come out of a plane. I was working with Frank Curnow and he had a fishing boat on Porthkerris beach so he rowed out to where the airman had come down. We weren’t sure if he was English or German, but Frank brought him back and it turned out he was German. We gave him something to eat and then the authorities came and took him away.

We were always friendly with the Yanks and German boys and I remember one well-known British soldier who was stationed in town and who was quite a good footballer — he was called Alf Ramsey! I saw him play many a time on Helston Downs — gone now as it’s where Culdrose is.
Some years later when Alf was manager of Ipswich town a local boy — Nigel Hannaford, son of Charlie Hannaford the landlord of the Seven Stars Inn — went for trials with Ipswich. He didn’t succeed and I was in the bar one night when Alf was there (he used to spend his holidays in Cornwall) and Charlie asked him why Nigel had failed. Alf said that he was a very good footballer, but was two yards too slow!

A local man, George Williams, was a corporal in the army and he was in charge of the PoW’s at Nansloe.

Once when I went to work the whole of Porthkerris beach was covered in hatches, which had been washed ashore from a sunken cargo ship. By 4 p.m. there wasn’t one left — all the locals had had them.

On another occasion we drilled 72 holes into the cliff and they were all primed and ready for firing when two bosses, Mr. Caddy & Mr. Sobey, arrived and wanted to set them off. The foreman, Frank Curnow, told Mr. Sobey to fire first and Mr. Caddy second, but they did it the other way around and so only the top holes went off. We had to work for the next six months with the other holes still primed. It was lucky nothing happened or we would have all been blown up.

One morning the foreman told me and Harold Johns to go and give a hand to prepare for blasting. Suddenly a rock exploded and we all skidaddled and one man, Freddie Bastian, was the first to get under cover, but all his clothes were blown off and his backside was peppered with stones. Another man, Bill Thomas, was never seen again. Part of him was blown out to sea. By rights I shouldn’t have been there as I was too young.

There was a fisherman, called Mr. Rendle, at Port Navas. Scores of times he took his boat over to France, by night, to take out or bring back British agents. No one knew about it until after the war — he was a marvellous man.

A German bomber dropped his bombs at Rosevear Hill, near Mawgan, and two cottages were destroyed. At first there was no sign of the inhabitants, but eventually one, Mrs. Treloar, was found under the stairs where she’d gone to get a shovelful of coal just as the bombs fell.

My sister’s boyfriend was a regular soldier before the war and he and a mate absconded to come home and get married before going overseas. He got home on the Friday, married on the Saturday and went straight back on the train, but his regiment had already gone. He spent a month in Aldershot glasshouse then went to France. He was captured near Dunkirk and was marched 1000 miles to Poland where he spent more than five years as a PoW. He was big chap, but when he came back he was so thin he needed two cushions to sit on. My mother tried to feed him up, but his stomach was shrunk so much it made him ill. He did eventually recover though.

VE Day was 8th May and we were given the day off work. A group of Helston & Gweek bandsmen got together and hastily organised Flora Day and at 3 p.m. I danced in that. It was a very lively day.

Video details CWS040604 16:53:39 to 17:19:39

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