大象传媒

I was six, rising seven when D Day happened. We lived outside Plymouth, close to the Plymouth to Tavistock road and just up the hill from where Derriford Hospital now stands. My father served in the Canadian and the British Army throughout the First World War but had been turned down for further service, as being too old, so had joined the Home Guard and commanded the Roborough Platoon. His day job was at the Bank of England, which, at that time, had a branch in Plymouth.

The War was everywhere around us. Plymouth Airport was a fighter base, Glenholt Woods echoed to the sound of rifle fire, the roads were full of lorries and jeeps and enormous DUKWS and, somewhere 鈥榰p there鈥� and effectively out of bounds to civilians, Dartmoor was one massive American Army camp. Long columns of marching soldiers filled the roads, Plymouth Sound swarmed with every type and size of vessel from tiny patrol boats to massive battleships and aircraft carriers and Devonport was awash with sailors.

I was born in 1937, my brother in 1939, so the curious thing, to our young minds, wasn鈥檛 the War. War was normal, what was strange to us was this thing called 鈥淧eace,鈥� which people talked about. We can鈥檛 have understood what they meant, though we may have vaguely absorbed that Peace would mean an end to rationing and to us, that meant just the one thing, limitless chocolates and sweets. That, too, was quite an alien thought to take in.

Somehow, and intimately linked in our minds were what we called 鈥淭he Invasion,鈥� (I don鈥檛 think 鈥淒 Day鈥� came till much later) and this Heaven-on-Earth land of limitless sweets. Or so we thought.

And, then, one bright morning, in early June 1944, the Invasion was suddenly 鈥榦n鈥� and the evidence was right down at the end of our street.

And this is the bit, which will stay in my mind for as long as I have a mind for things to stay in. Fifty yards up the road from our house, the Plymouth road had overnight been transformed into an enormous, endless convoy of American Army lorries. Dartmoor was being emptied into the waiting transports in the Sound. On and on and on they went. One after another after another after another. And there was only me and my brother to watch them, as we stood beside the road till our mother called us in to lunch. And, when we went back, they were still rolling. On and on and on. Then tea-time and then bed time and all the time, we stood quite still and watched and that huge convoy just kept going.

The American soldiers, sitting in rows in their open-topped transports must have been told to be friendly to the 鈥榥atives,鈥� which, on that section of the road meant just two little boys, because they kept on throwing sweets at us. Or we thought they were sweets, until we tasted them. By lunch-time, we each had beside us a pile of these strange offerings. We had more sweets, each of us than we had imagined existed in the whole world. And yet we knew not to touch them because a sweet is what you eat after lunch, just one sweet, of course and certainly not in piles as big as small snowmen.

鈥淎fter lunch,鈥� our mother said, we could have one, 鈥渏ust one, mind you.鈥�

They were revolting. Absolutely disgusting. Truly awful and a hideous disappointment. Let downs don鈥檛 come bigger than that to small boys. And we had thought rationing had come to an end just specially for us two, right beside the Tavistock to Plymouth road, courtesy of the American Army.

Later in the day, someone, an adult, tried one and the explanation followed. They were Horlicks tablets and the soldiers had hated them as much as we did. No wonder they were hurling them out of the lorries fast as they could. So much for cosying up to the 鈥榥atives.鈥�

The next bit, if I鈥檓 honest, I only think I can remember. Perhaps someone sowed the seed of memory in my mind and I didn鈥檛 really see this at all. But, somehow, the memory persists, so maybe I did and maybe I didn鈥檛 see, that afternoon, a long and steady stream of military ambulances moving back up the hill and past the end of our road. But they would have been on our side of the road, so perhaps we only imagined them or picked up that part of the story from someone else.

But, and here鈥檚 another caveat, whether that convoy was on D Day itself or perhaps more likely a day or so before, that I shall also never really know. But I was very young.

Then we got back to our normal lives and it was years later that I fully got it out of my head that D Day was the same day as the end of the war. And sweet rationing lasted several years after the war was over.

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