大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Sarah Housden of Norfolk Adult Education鈥檚 reminiscence team on behalf of Thomas Hewitt and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was born in 1934 and was only five when the war started. I lived on a farm in Strumpshaw near Norwich, called High Noon Farm, and can remember seeing dogfights between planes taking place over the farm during the peak of the war. We used to go out after tea to the stables to see to the horses, and you could see the old Doodlebugs come right over the top of us. They looked like bombs and we could hear them, but sometimes they would cut out, and then we had to look out.

I can remember what is now the Heartsease Estate being an airfield and there being all fields around where I now live in Thorpe. I can remember the Mousehold area being bombed and RAF planes ditching near what is now the Heartsease.

Mother used to get her ration come up once a week from Rix鈥檚 General Store in Acle. She would have all the ration books there and Gerald Rix would take so many stamps out of one book and so many stamps out of another. We didn鈥檛 have any trouble getting hold of milk and eggs living on a farm. My father used to milk twice a day, by hand. We had plenty of eggs, but we also used the powdered egg that was available. I though it was alright, quite nice. We had it as scrambled egg with bread and butter and my mother would make cakes with it which I thought were as good as ones made with fresh eggs.

We had four Land Girls helping on the farm, and mother had to feed them as well as us. Our farm was 150 acres. The Land Girls came from all walks of life. One was an author, and another a hairdresser. They would lay their hand to anything. Dolly Steele was the author, and she came and saw us after the war for three or four weeks. She鈥檇 got herself a big motor and a chauffeur.

We all had guns and we used to shoot a lot of water hens (moorhens) for the table. We could always do with the extra meat and nothing would go astray if it had meat on it.

My Dad was in the Blofield area Home Guard during the war. They dug trenches in the hills and used tractors with Caterpillar Tracks on as tanks.

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