大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Three Counties Action on behalf of Dennis Branfiled and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

Up to the age of eleven years, I lived in Hampden Park, it was a few miles from Eastbourne, Sussex.
A month or more after war broke out a shop had been torpedoed or mined, just off the coast of Eastbourne. The ship was named S.S Bern Hill. It was still afloat and as the tides changed it swung open and shut like a cupboard door and you could see right into it.

The cargo it carried, we were told, was cheeses, tins of soup, typewriters and telephones. The public were allowed to salvage cheeses or tins. Anything else had to be handed into customs on site.
Two of my school mates and myself decided to do some salvaging. After school, we, Clifford Jupp, Gordon Hoadley and me, cycled to Eastbourne, waded in to the sea, we had wellingtons on, feeling with our feet for anything we could find. No luck for sometime, we were now up to our waists in water. Then we heard a shout and a splash, Clifford, the smallest, had disappeared. He had tripped over a cheese. Now these cheeses were two diameter and about six inches thick wrapped in an oilcloth waterproof.

The question now was, how do we pick it up and get it home? After a lot of deliberation, we stood together one side of it, feeing it with our feet, and then, one, two, three, we all ducked under the waves, lifted it on its end and rolled it to shore.

It was much too heavy to carry so I tied it to the carrier of my bike. As we rode out past the custom point, someone gave us six tins of soup. Half way home, down a cinder track, I had a puncture. I dare not leave the cheese on my bike, in case I ruined my inner tube, so one boy pushed two bikes, one boy pushed one bike and the tins of soups and one boy rolled the cheese, taking turns.

Eventually we got home. As we reached mine first we put it in my kitchen. I went to bed, Dad came home early hours of the morning, woke me and wanted all the info about the cheese.

So then it had to be cut three ways. I think it must have took him an hour or so to split it. He finished up using a saw. We had cheese every which way there was, but Dad could do that, his job was catering. But I must admit, it did get a bit much towards the end.

A few days later, Police cars were driving around the village broadcasting, 鈥淒on鈥檛 eat the soup鈥� as people were getting tin poisoning. I fetched my two out and they were rusty.

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