大象传媒

I was about 13 when war broke out. I was a pupil at Ribston Hall High School in Gloucester and because of the bombing in the big cities they evacuated children from London and Birmingham to the quieter cities. Gloucester had children from Birmingham and Kings Norton Grammar and George Dixon School came to Ribston. We would go in the mornings and finish at lunchtime and they would have their lessons in the afternoon.

I remember once I had the afternoon off because of this arrangement and I popped to the corner shop and there was a crowd in there all chatting, and a woman came and left her baby in a pram outside and we heard this plane and someone said: "That's not one of ours."

So we all went to the door and looked up. I said: "Look, it's dropping leaflets," - because in those days there weren't many bombs it was mostly leaflets - and then we realised from the 'whee-crump" noise that it was bombs. We all, as one, dived out, grabbed the pram, pulled the pram into the shop and I saw five bombs leave that one plane.

I jumped on my bike and pedalled as fast as I could to get home to see where the bombs had dropped, and it was somewhere in the Barton Street-Derby Road area. When I got there, air raid wardens were coming from everywhere, pulling hats on and blowing whistles and I could see there was chaos. I hung about for a while and then they put cordons round and no one could go into the area so I came home and told everyone what had happened.

Just after that Dunkirk happened and that brings back a lot of memories for me. There were loads and loads of chaps in the Glosters from Tredworth at Dunkirk. I had a cousin who lived next door and he was home on leave. He hadn't been married very long and when I said hello he said "I'm home on embarkation leave, my love."
I said "You'll be all right, won't you Tom?".
He said: "No I won't love, I'll be just in time for the big push."
And he was killed at Dunkirk.

My grandparents kept a pub and I used to go in and help them wash up the glasses and other little jobs. There was one chap called Howard Sysum who lived right opposite the pub, and he had a big family in Tredworth. He never usually used our pub but on this particular night he did. He was sitting quietly on his own, speaking to nobody and drinking his beer. When it was time to go he said goodnight and that was that. His family came across later and said: "Fancy him coming in your pub, we were all looking for him on his last night to give him a party but we couldn't find him." Howard got killed at Dunkirk. He seemed to have a premonition that he wouldn't be coming back.

There were no end of local lads killed or missing. When they were missing, or families didn't know what was happening, the women all went to meet the trains up at Gloucester station and I went with them. My grandmother gave me a big box of single Woodbines, five little fags in a dainty packet, and I'd go along the platform distributing them up and down the train, and matches, and the chaps were there, soldiers in odd uniform, they had football kit on, not proper uniform at all. The wounded ones had the Red Cross waiting with stretchers to take them off and then they'd say "Will you post this letter?", "Will you contact my girl to let her know I'm OK?" And all the local women had photographs and asked them "Have you seen so-and-so" and some of course got away safe from Dunkirk and some did not.

The one incident I remember very distinctly just after Dunkirk, end of May or beginning of June, I came out of the pub and round the corner came this soldier, full pack, six-foot-three or six-foot-four tall, with a physique to match. He came round fast and he said, "Hello, love, I'm just off to see our Mam, I've just got back from Dunkirk." Well you could see that, he had BEF, British Expeditionary Force on his shoulders. And up the road he went he was almost running. Thatlovely soldier went all through the war, and then we heard he got dropped at Arnhem on the bridge and he got killed. I was very interested to find out exactly what happened so I asked his best mate and he said: "He was running across the bridge with a gun in each hand firing at everything as he went, till he dropped."

The chaps who were at Dunkirk used to meet up in the pub to talk about the things that had happened and how they got away, and what they did. One grabbed a bike and cycled through France to Dunkirk and another one was there on the beaches and they kept bombing them and he said "I knew every shrub and clump of grass on that beach" because that was the only cover to hide in.

Another chap, Bill Newman, his best mate was called John Aldridge, he was only 18 but he had put his age on when he joined up and he was a sergeant. They were bombed and John cried: "Oh Bill, Bill, my guts" and Bill said: "What's up" and John said: "Undo my trousers," and he did and his stomach fell out and he died in his arms. And Bill would come to the pub every so often to buy John's mother a drink. It was a terrible sad time.

There was one big family called the Oakes, they were very well known in Gloucester and most of them were in the Army. One chap, he was a wag, he was on a big battleship and when he came home from a famous big battle people said: "How'd you get on, Kitch? What was it like?" and he replied: "Tredworth on a Saturday night!"

The Robinswood Hill Barracks near the pub was used during the war by the Signals, the Royal Army Service Corps and others and then word got out, the Yanks are coming. We didn't believe it but sure enough one morning down came these trucks and these chaps and they HAD come.

They were nice, and they used to come in the pub. I was only about 15 at this time and they they were really kind to me. They'd bring this brown paper parcel and there was chocolate and chewing gum and cigarettes, too, which I couldn't have so I gave them away.

Once there was this funny shaped bottle in with a dark fluid in so when I saw this nice chap the next time I said: "What's the stuff in that bottle?"
"That's Coca-Cola" he told me. I'd never even heard of it, never mind seen it or drunk it!

I was in a position to be able to get photographic equipment and I got their films developed for them. This went on for ages and then the very last time I did it they never came down and paid me and I couldn't understand because they wouldn't do that. I was told later that they'd left and a big boat went down and I think my American friends were on it.

I came out early in the morning Christmas Day, the first Christmas the Yanks were there, and there were all this big trucks lined up along Tredworth Road and I wondered what they were doing. All these little Tredworth boys and girls were coming along all dressed in their Sunday best and the Yanks were lifting them into the back of the truck. They'd arranged a lovely party for all the local children whose Dads were away in the Forces. I don't care what anybody else says, they were great people.

Word came out that there was going to be action and the Yanks disappeared for a few nights. Then a couple of our regulars came in with their hair cut so close you wouldn鈥檛 believe and they said: "We're confined to barracks, we're going overseas, so we had to slip out the back." They had been to put an order at the fish shop, came in and had a couple of pints in the pub while they waited and then went off with a big, tall haversack that was full of fish and chips. And that was the last we ever saw of them.

Everybody rallied round to help each other during the war, however little we all had. You'd see people coming home on a 48-hour pass to get married and to make a cake someone would say "I've got a half-pound of marge you can have" and someone else would say "Here's some sugar," or "I'll let you have a bottle of wine". You'd give what you had.

We all shared and I wish you could bottle that, the spirit we had in the war, it was marvellous. If anyone was in trouble everyone rallied round and we helped each other. And there was no waste, because we hardly had anything, so everything we did have we looked after and treasured it, not like today's throwaway society. I'm delighted there are those today who have what they like, they don't want for anything. In wartime if you could find a tin of something to spend your points on your face lit up - things were so pleasing in those days because we had so little.

During the war I worked at the Gloucester Railway Carriage & Wagon Company, known as the Wagon Works, where they made Churchill tanks. It was a very busy place. I was a wage clerk and I had to walk through the factory to collect the wage slips and I can remember seeing chaps asleep in the barrel, they used to go to work and do 24 hours and if they wanted a sleep they would just sit in the barrel, tip it up and go to sleep.

I worked in the offices which were high up and when they let the tanks out on test we'd be nosy and we'd open the window to peep and see the tanks rolling up the Stroud Road. I remember sticking my nose out one day and this beautiful big motorcar, a Daimler I think it was, came rolling down and pulled up right outside the works. Out stepped an ordinary soldier, mopping his brow as he got out of the car. Then who should step out behind him but Queen Mary and I thought: "Goodness me". She was at Badminton and she would always give soldiers a lift if she saw them, she was ever so kind like that.

Another day it was pouring with rain. I was working with another woman and and I looked out of the window and said "Olive, your brother's out there." This was her brother who was a pilot in the Air Force. He'd come to take her out to lunch and because it was raining so hard and there was a mac someone had left in the office I threw it down to him. He took the mac and gave me a wave - of course I got in trouble for doing it, because it was a bit of sedate place. Two days later she'd had a telegram to say he'd been killed in operations. Things like this were ever so sad but there were good times too.

I remember VE Day. It was so exciting, the war was over, the lights could go on, the chaps would be coming home and everything could go back to normal. My grandmother who ran the pub said she would give away a barrel of beer. So of course the pub was packed. We soon got rid of that barrel of beer and more. They danced in the street, they drank in the pub, there was music and bonfires lit that burned the tarmac. Everyone went mad, it was lovely.

One girl there, her name was Joan, was dancing and having the time of her life. But a couple of days later she was breaking her heart - her husband was one of the last chaps to be killed in the war and she had been dancing and she felt so bad about that. But of course it wasn't her fault, it was just the will of God or whatever you like to call it.

A lot of Tredworth chaps were prisoners of war and when news came that they were being re-patriated and would be home soon a friend and I would go to Gloucester station on a tandem when we knew troop trains were coming in.

We used to sit on the station on those evenings until the train came in and if we spotted somebody getting off that we knew we would jump on the tandem and pedal as hard as we could back to their street to tell their family, "Your Charlie's coming home" or "We've just seen your Fred getting off the train". The families would grab all the 'Welcome Home' banners they had made ready for their homecoming and everybody would be in the street ready when they got back, it was blooming fantastic.

Some time ago we were visiting my daughter in France. While we were out there we went to the Normandy beaches and visited a museum where they played a film about the D-Day landings. We watched spellbound and when the lights went up, in front of us was a group of little Cub Scouts from Kent.

One little lad stood up and looked me in the eye and said: "Did we win, Miss?" I said "Yes, my dear, we did!"

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