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My first memory of the war was when my father had been listening to the wireless which was the old fashioned type using a horned shaped loudspeaker and connected to a 12 volt battery. He announced that war had been declared against Germany.
We lived in a large old rectory in Shropshire somewhere on the railway line between Wellington and Crewe. There was no electric light and we used paraffin lamps in the evenings. Water was obtained from a well and this was pumped every day using a petrol engine. My mother cooked on a kitchen range which required coal and coke.
My father had been in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in WW1, so it was no surprise that he was appointed Chaplain/Padre to the forces stationed in the village. He was also Chief Air Raid Warden.
I was almost six years old and my brother was five years older. I remember a friend of his, Peter Parker, who joined the RAF and became a rear gunner in a Wellington bomber. He was reported missing and must have been shot down on a night raid over Germany. We were all very sad.
Later in 1940 we were to meet some woodcutters from Estonia, Latvia and the Ukraine. They had to cut down trees to use as ‘pit props in the coal mines. There were also Czech and Polish airmen who were being trained as fighter pilots at nearby Tern Hill aerodrome. I remember they were invited to our house at Christmas and also some young women, farmer’s daughters. The airmen were very smart in their uniforms and I was curious to see how well they could dance. I remember they took every opportunity to kiss the girls under the mistletoe!
I also remember that we had army families billeted with us at the Rectory because there were plenty of rooms. My mother was kept very busy getting sheets and making up the beds to accommodate them. However, one army officer’s wife was not very appreciative; she was very bossy and treated my mother like a servant. His ‘batman’ (the officer’s personal assistant), known as Seymour, also stayed with us. He had survived the evacuation of Dunkirk, although he didn’t say very much about it and we got on very well with him.
We had other people staying with us who were much more appreciative. However, a naval chaplain stayed with us for a short time, came running out of his bedroom one day shouting blue murder at our dog, a Cairn terrier because he’d jumped onto his bed with muddy paws! My mother of course cleaned up the mess but we thought it was rather funny to see this angry man with just a towel wrapped around his waist looking not at all like a holy man!
Much later in the war, about 1944 we had a pilot officer and his wife staying with us. They lived in a part of the house that was made into a flat. They were the nicest couple who stayed with us and we kept in touch after they left. Unfortunately he was killed in a flying accident over East Anglia at the end of the war.
Another memory is of a cousin, Alan, who joined a tank regiment. The last time we saw him was when he arrived one night on his motor bike on his way south. He was later in the 1st Army when they landed in North Africa and fought their way to link up with the 8th Army in Tunisia. They then continued to Italy but Alan was killed by a stray shell somewhere near Florence. At that time the tune of ‘Lili Marlene’ was popular but his mother disliked it intensely because of its sad association with his death.
As the war progressed the army moved out to make way for a German POW camp. The porter at the railway station told me how he stayed up in the signal box while prisoners were unloaded by the guards. We had a small group of Germans, mainly older men, probably farmers working in our garden. It was mid winter and they were given hot chocolate and a cigarette. We heard later that they were beaten up by the ‘Nazi’ elements in the camps for fraternising with the enemy. I remember seeing wooden toys made by prisoners, one of which was a German aeroplane made from a lavatory seat from the camp. I was a keen aeroplane spotter and knew most of the German planes by sight as well as our own aircraft.
At the age of seven and a half I was sent away to boarding school in the village of Dunchurch, not far from Rugby and Coventry. I remember one night, it must have been in the summer, that we heard the ‘crump, crump’ of the bombs. We really weren’t old enough to appreciate the significance. It was German bombers attacking the city of Coventry. Not long after that we were taken to the village near the Dun Cow Hotel where we saw Winston Churchill stop in his car on the way to visit Coventry. He was offered a bottle of champagne but no one had a corkscrew to open it. He was smoking his cigar and made a ’V’ sign to the crowd who cheered him.
About this time I was going down the hill to the swimming pool we picked up some souvenirs from the wreckage of a German bomber, probably a Heinkel that had been shot down during a raid.
In our History lessons our teacher made us aware of what happened in the Battle of Britain and also the progress of the fighting in North Africa.
Although my home was situated in the country we were in the path of night raids on the Midlands, especially Birmingham and Liverpool. During one night a lot of the villagers came to the Rectory with their pets (cats, dogs and canaries) to shelter in the cellar which had been reinforced. We could hear the drone of then German bombers overhead but I was told to go back to bed!
At about that time I remember we took roast potatoes and parsnips to a searchlight unit based not far from us.
On another occasion my father was called out to liaise with the military who had called in a mine disposal squad to diffuse the a magnetic mine. This had been dropped over the village after German raiders had been driven off Liverpool docks. These mines were meant to destroy shipping. One had already exploded over a cowshed on a farm and some cows had been killed. The cowman had been injured and had his glass eye blown out.
The Home Guard were under the control of Colonel Brown. They used to meet quite often at their HQ in the stables and coach house of The Rectory and I remember them coming back with rabbits and also the occasional pheasant. On another occasion they were searching the out buildings for an escaped Italian prisoner. He was later captured trying to steal food from a farmhouse.
At the latter end of the war just before ‘D’ day there were American soldiers stationed at the camp. A group of American chaplains came to visit my father and brought spam and chewing gum. The Americans were not popular with the local men because they were unfair competition; they gave nylons to the girls and had superior spending power. Sadly, many of them must have perished on the beaches of Normandy.

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