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This story has been contributed to the People's War by the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Learning Centre, Gloucester, on behalf of Stephen Charles Hawksworth and with his permission.

Here are some wartime stories passed down to me by my late mother Rachel Elise Green, father Albert John Hawksworth and grandmother Violet Green — snippets I remember from my childhood days.

My grandmother lived in Birdwood near Gloucester and she remembers hearing the German bombers coming over, the distinctive drone of the engines on the aeroplanes. Seeveral bombs dropped on the farm in Chapel Lane, Birdwood. She also talked about all the American soldiers stationed in the area, some of whom were black. There was a lady who lived near the farm and my grandmother, a staunch Methodist, was amazed when she gave birth to a child, because there was no man in her life, and the child had very dark skin. Another lady had a child with ginger curly hair and her husband who was away at war looked nothing like that.

My mother was a child in the war and at about the time of D-Day all day long on the A4o through Huntley and Birdwood there was a non-stop convoy of waterproof troop transport and the noise was frightening and no one could cross the road all day because it they kept coming and just didn’t stop. It was endless, hours and hours and hours from dawn to dusk.

There were German prisoners of war at a camp nearby and those who were trusted, who weren’t ardent Nazis, were allowed out on gardening duties and they worked in my grandmother’s garden. They were quite friendly and they would talk and give children sweets and play with them. But there was one, she didn’t know why he was allowed out, who wasn’t afraid to say he was sure Germany would triumph.

Once a tank went off the road near May Hill and went through the roof of a property there.

My father was born and brought up in the Newent area and he remembers double summertime during the war. He used to work out on the farm and help bring in the harvest and it was still daylight till 11 at night. The Germans would bomb the fields, dropping incendiaries with the idea being to burn the crops so the food could not be gathered.

My father and his friends once found a butterfly bomb in a hedgerow and they played football with it not knowing what it was. They kicked it down into Newent town centre where a policeman recognised what it was, everybody was evacuated and the bomb disposal came out and my father had a severe telling off for not realising it was a butterfly bomb.

There was an Italian prisoner of war camp nearby and Italians were very good with radios and had an unofficial business repairing and making radios.

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