大象传媒

This story has been written onto the 大象传媒 People's War site by CSV Storygatherer Lucy Thomas - Callington U3A - on behalf of Ena Parkin. They fully understand the terms and conditions of the site.

My name is Ena Parkin, aged 85 years and I live in Callington. I was born in the parish of Landulph where my father was a market gardener.
When my three brothers left school my father rented a market garden called Strawberry Hill in the parish of St. Dominic. This is where I lived during the war years. It was situated between Halton Quay and Pentillie Quay, right beside the River Tamar. When the air raids started and Plymouth was bombed, enemy planes would pick up sight of the river and follow it into Plymouth. The army would bring their guns to nearby vantage points making the enemy planes drop their bombs before they reached Plymouth and we had several dropped on the area where we lived. Sometimes we would take shelter under the stairs, sometimes under the kitchen table. Then my father had a good idea, we would use an old disused lime-burning kiln nearby. This proved to be very good but rather cold. We had bombs dropped in our garden on the broad-bean bed and had cherry trees and plum trees blown out of the ground.
My father and I were standing outside the back door of our house at Strawberry Hill and the planes were going over and the guns were firing as usual; the search lights were on, when all at once there was a heck of a clang. Father and I were blown into the kitchen, straight across the concrete and into the kitchen! Well that really scared us but the noise in there was just as bad. It had rattled mother's kilner jars off the top shelf in the dairy where she kept her bottled fruit. Of course that was all smashed on the floor.
My brothers were not called up for Army service because they worked on the land. They joined the local Home Guard and I learned First Aid with the St. John's Ambulance service.
We also had two children from London as evacuees away from the bombings of London. Their parents used to phone up regularly to ask how the children were and my parents invited them down for the weekend to see their children. They duly arrived at Saltash Station where we met them and brought them home. That evening was the first heavy air raid on Plymouth and the parents were really upset. They had never seen anything like it where they lived and so decided to take the children home with them on the Monday.
We had no glass in the windows of our house for days. The explosions of the bombs and crack of gunfire would disturb all the pheasants in the woods around and they would make an awful lot of noise especially if they were disturbed at night.
There was one incident during this time when an enemy plane came out of a cloud and machine gunned the salmon fishermen in their boat on the river. Luckily they did not get hit themselves but their boat did and collected several holes. The fishermen had to row quickly for the bank before they sunk.
Later U.S Army camps were set up in the fields either side of the main road to Saltash. My boy friend had to get a special pass to cross the road to come and see me. Then, one morning when we were going to Plymouth early with our fruit and vegetables, we were surprised to see that all the fields were empty, no tents or army were to be seen. They had moved out during the night for embarkation from Plymouth. This was D-Day!

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