大象传媒

John Bevan. Wartime ramblings!

I was a seven year old kid out at Combe Martin when the war started.
The Yanks came into Ilfracombe and Woolacombe. They used to be around the village chasing the girls and drinking. A friend of mines mother was very friendly with an American and they used to give us gum and the candy. We liked that part of it.
I remember one time they were on a route march through the village and asked if my name was Chuck and I said 鈥榶es鈥� and he gave me a packet of gum. I shall always remember that.
The village itself was busy during the war with the Yanks driving around the village in their jeeps. I remember one Yank we used to call him Mexican Joe because he couldn鈥檛 speak good English at all. He would never fight the police if there were any trouble in the pub. He was a lovely little fellow, friendly with everybody. Spanish was probably his language. Probably conscripted by the American Army.

There were a lot of evacuees in the village, mainly from London I think. We didn鈥檛 have any because my parents only had a small cottage.

When war was declared people were always around muttering about how awful it was.
I can remember royal Naval Ships, Minesweepers I believe they were coming into Combe Martin Bay, possibly some shore leave for the crew. Kids in the village took the small landing boat and went out to the ship and were given bread and jam on the minesweeper. We used to run all over the ship.
I can remember when an aircraft chased the Germans away from Swansea or somewhere and they offloaded their bombs between Little and Big Hangman. The next day all the kids were up there looking for bits of bombs and things. Didn鈥檛 find anything except for dead snakes!!

I remember going up towards 鈥淕lass Box鈥� a bungalow on the common above Hunters Inn when an English bomber had crashed. We walked up there to have a look at the crashed bomber. There was one little soldier on guard to make sure no one took anything away.

I remember when a German aircraft got lost and followed one of the British aircraft in to land at Chivenor where he was taken prisoner. I remember when they brought Pluto the pipe-line under the ocean in to Watermouth Harbour and they had petrol tanks in the caravan park at Mill Park. There was a guard at Sawmills to make sure that noone was smoking on the busses because of the possibility of explosion. That went on through the war right up to the invasion. There were fuel tankers moving the fuel around the district all the time.

My father was a market gardener and was in the Home Guard in the village. He had about two acres and supplied people locally. Some produce was brought into Ilfracombe to be sold in the shops. He had three gardens in different parts of the village.

My grandparents were alright in the war, they lived out at Croyde and had a cottage near the Nalgo Holiday camp. The yanks who were based at the camp used to visit gran and granddad for a chat and they used to bring tins of meat and jam, so they lived pretty well compared with some.鈥漝idn鈥檛 they just!!鈥�

You could go to the coastguards to watch the fires burning along the Welsh coast. People seemed fascinated at watching Wales burn!

Collingwood Hotel in Ilfracombe was known as HMS Collingwood because a lot of naval personnel were based there. My parents were in there one day and were talking to a rating who had been posted to HMS Collingwood who was quite upset to begin with because he wasn鈥檛 on a ship!, but soon realised that it was a pretty cushy billet to be sent to.
The Ilfracombe Hotel was the base for the Pay Corps. Colonel Oliver was in charge of the Pay Corps and I went to school with a couple of his sons. They lived in a caravan out a Hele. Dave Pete and Bill Oliver. I was friendly with Dave more than the others. They then went out to Georgeham and started a nursery then moved into Barnstaple.

There was plenty of multiplying around here during the war!
I remember the air sea rescue boat positioned in Ilfracombe harbour that went out to rescue crash victims from the Bristol Channel. There were rafts that moored out in the channel ready for quick rescue operations to take place.

The Royal Observer Corps had a shelter up on Lester point at Combe Martin and they used that to start with but then made a better wooden shed for them to use for their equipment. It was all local men who manned the observatory. My uncle was one of the men working there. I was more interested in the recognition cards for spotting aircraft. We used to look at them for hours. I could have recognised most of the aircraft that flew overhead 鈥� English and German. But there weren鈥檛 many German aircraft over Combe Martin. I think the shed got burned down after the war.

Combe Martin was fairly safe because it is built along the valley and aircraft don鈥檛 see it from west or east and if approached from the sea the valley is too narrow to fly through.
I remember sitting in the school in Combe Martin one day when a fighter aircraft was flying so low it felt as though it was going to hit us. We really thought it was coming through the window! It must have rattled the slates on the roof!
The garage below where we lived had a little factory making parts for something, I鈥檓 not sure what for. They used to charge accumulator radios up. One day a car drove up blowing his horn for petrol, but Mr Sanders who was upstairs getting an accumulator said that 鈥淗e could wait for his petrol, his mother had waited 9 months for him!!鈥�

We had a lot of prisoners of war working on the farms and gardens. The whole area was agricultural producing food for the war effort. Brimlands field at the base of Hillsborough was all ploughed up for food production mainly for allotments for people to grow bits and pieces for themselves.
One of the German prisoners who came to the village stayed in the village after the war and then went to America to live. He really integrated into the community 鈥� he was only about 18 when he was captured. I don鈥檛 think he wanted to return to Germany because he was from the Russian sector of Germany. The prison workers were transported into the village in busses and lorries daily.
Same with the Land Girls who came in each day from Barnstaple. They had a hostel in Barnstaple High Street somewhere.
One time we were in Barnstaple and a very small friend of ours George
got picked up and pushed through the window of the girl鈥檚 hostel 鈥� they just threw him out again!

We kids really were little sods lots of the time.
One of the publicans in the village had a lady customer who used to announce when she was leaving for home and the pub would empty of Yanks pretty quickly!!
Bales of cotton used to get washed up on Combe Martin beach from cargo ships losing goods travelling up the Bristol Channel. There was always lots of wood washed up on the beach which we used for building sheds on the gardens. Sometimes there were bombs washed up on the beach which were defused.

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