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I was a schoolboy in Northampton and Eastbourne during the way, and was 15 when it finished. I have to say that the end of the war came as something of a relief. I was approaching call up age, and didn’t fancy going to Burma.

In 1938 my family had bought land in Sussex and started building their own house. The
Government announced in 1940 that any house being built, which didn’t yet have a roof on, had to be abandoned. We had jut started on the roof, and so were able to continue.

I was sent to school in Brackley for a while, and remember the bombers going over to Coventry and the midlands. At first we were made to go to the basement, but later were allowed to sleep through. We had to carry our gas masks everywhere, and the school changing room had a row of hooks to hang them all on.

At school, four boys each day were given the day off lessons, to undertake all the domestic duties such as cleaning, washing up, serving food etc.

Back in Sussex, we lived at Plumpton, north west of Eastbourne. I remember that there were road blocks put up during the build up to D-Day. The roads had a chicane of oil drums on to slow traffic. At the end of our garden we had an airfield, manned by Poles. We would climb the trees at the end of the garden and talk to them. I remember too that the tanks used to go along the roads, and damage all the drains as they went. Brighton beach was completely inaccessible, being not only mined but also wired off.

Rationing must have been hard for my mother, with three growing lads to feed. My elder brother was called up to work in the mines in Scotland. He would tell us of working shifts, and sleeping in shifts. The bed was always warm. He eventually managed to get out of the mine and join the Royal Engineers.

We used to shoot rabbits to supplement the diet. I have to say, I’ve never liked them since. We also used to keep chickens. There was a scheme whereby you could give your egg ration card to a local poultry farmer who would use the card to get poultry food. Dad used to then give out about half a dozen eggs each a week — far more than the ration would have done.

I remember the doodlebugs, and watching the fighters either shoot them down, or tip them over with their wings. A Lancaster crashed once nearby. We all ran to try and find the bits. I colleted lots of bullets and hid them in the garden. We found them again quite recently! One of the first V2s landed near us — it was a good source of glass wool.

When I was thirteen I joined the JTC, to be trained to become a proper soldier! We were issued with dirty old Boer War carbines, but Monty used to come along and do battle drill on occasions.

There was a very real fear that the Germans would soon be on their way, and this fear underlined those years. I also had an anxiety that I was shortly to become cannon fodder.

Because the Germans found Beachy Head to be a good landmark, they used to aim for Eastbourne a lot. Our school tower had a machine gun emplacement on it to try and dissuade them. It got one or two.

My mother hoarded some tins of food in the void under the bottom drawer of a unit. We discovered them not long ago. Unfortunately the mice had eaten the labels off so we had no idea what was in them.

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