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This story has been written to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ People's War site by CSV Storygatherer Coralie, on behalf of John Hannaford. The story has been added to the site with his permission and John fully understands the terms and conditions of the site.

At the time of the evacuation of the Stokenham Parish area, due to the use of the area for the training of American troops, John’s father, Edward had the butcher’s shop at Torcross. The family — Edward and his wife, and their 5 children, Margaret, John, Reg, George and Una, lived at Prideaux House, which had originally been the farm house of the village farm, but now has the butcher’s shop facing the road with their accommodation at the back. The farm land was partly on the bank behind the house, with more on the high ground above the village. Beside the house, there were pig-sties, and a cattle shed and barn. Edward Hannaford used to keep some milking cows and take the milk round in a churn, from which he would ladle out from pint and half pint measures into milk jugs brought out from the houses. He gave that up in 1936, and just concentrated on the butchery side. When it was no longer a farm, the local fishermen used the outbuildings for making their crab pots, and as general storage. There was an old Rover car in the barn, which Edward bought from Major Thornton. He had plans to mount a van body on it and use it for the business, but for the time being it remained jacked up in the barn with a broken axle, and on their return they found it in the Ley opposite the Start Bay Inn.

As war dragged on, new plans to return to France were being formulated. There had been rumours going around the South Hams area that something was going to happen, so to the Hannaford family it didn’t come as a complete surprise, when the posters went up announcing that they were to move out in order that the area could become a practice ground for the American soldiers. Edward and his family accepted the fact that it was a necessary part of the war effort. He and his wife duly went along to Stokenham Church to hear what arrangements were made to help all the people concerned. He thought that this was a crafty move to have the meeting in the church. Was it designed to limit the reaction and language of those in the pews? A church environment would certainly have induced a certain degree of restraint and decorum.

In the village, there were another couple of shops, one run by Lawson and Pook, and the Cullivers had the other shop, but they didn’t return after the upheaval. Going back a bit further in time, Torcross had 2 tailors, a shoemaker and a bakery as well as the farm and butchery shop. Torcross Hotel boasted a petrol pump, and on reflection, John remembers that Ned Steer operated one down at Beesands, there was one at Hallsands and another at East Prawle. In fact, quite a number of villages had a single petrol pump — the old hand pump where the petrol was pushed on by a propeller in a glass dome, and the quantity was registered by a pointer on a dial.

When they heard that they had to get out, Edward had a lock-up shop built up at East Prawle, made from timbers taken from the building at Torcross in order that he could carry on his business. Mr Rogers, a butcher in Slapton, was called up during the war, so Edward undertook to supply some of his customers as well. Torcross had electricity and so a cold store could be installed and the electric mincer made light work of the making of mince and sausages. However, East Prawle still relied on lamps and candles, so storage of meat at the end of the week until Monday morning presented a problem. Fortunately for him, he had a relative with a butcher’s shop in Salcombe which had electricity and a cold store, so he was able to take what meat he had left on Saturday down to Salcombe until he opened for business again on Monday.

Although free transport and storage was available, Edward was able to organise his own removals of equipment, household goods and chattels. The family arranged to stay at Chivelstone and share the large farmhouse belonging to Mrs Hannaford’s sister. Being so large, it was quite easy to divide it into two. Some furniture they took into the house with them, and some was stored in the barn there. Stokenham School, of course, had to be closed, so the nearest school for the three youngest children was at East Prawle. They had to walk there and back each day from Chivelstone.

However, there were times when they didn’t go to school — when the potatoes had to be lifted, for instance, they were allowed to stay at home and give a hand.

John has a family photo album, and in it he has preserved a few meat coupons as a reminder of the war time rationing. He recalls that they were exchanged for 10d (4p) worth of meat and 2 oz of corned beef - per person per week! And when the price of topside was 3/2d a lb, they didn’t have a lot of meat to eat. Even so, 10d went a lot further in those days than it would today, and more so if the cheaper cuts of meat were chosen. Offal and chickens were not rationed as such, but these things did not go far when shared between all the butcher’s customers. For special occasions, people could save up the coupons and get a nice piece of meat, but it meant going without meanwhile. Something that most people will probably have forgotten, or not even been aware of, is that meat was the last item of food to be de-rationed, and was in 1954! Nine years after the war ended, but then there existed a different type of rationing. Wages were not very high and that limited the amount that could be spent on expensive items of food. Country folk did have an advantage over the city dwellers in that they could grow some food in the garden, or even keep a few chickens in the back garden, and the odd ‘free range’ rabbit also supplemented the diet. Added to which, those living near the coast were able to have fresh fish.

On the last permissible day for getting out of the house, the old Austin van was loaded up with the last minute odds and ends, and despite the clutch being a bit suspect they set off via Stokenham Village Hall, where they handed in their keys to the property, then went on to their temporary home in Chivelstone. They left just a few things in the house. There was the 10ft long kitchen table, the big marble slab and the heavy wooden chopping board in the shop. They decided to put the chopping board under the marble slab in the hopes that it would protect it from being cracked while they were away. Then there was the Rover in the barn. During the evacuation, Edward was still able to use his van for his deliveries, and if he ran short of petrol coupons, he could often persuade one of his farmer friends or a fisherman to help him out. Somehow he kept going.

John was in his teens then, and as his war effort he became a ‘B’ member in the Observer Corps, who manned the observation post at Coleridge Cross. He was often called in for duty at the weekends, and cycled over from Chivelstone. This gave some of the men a chance of a weekend at home with the family. Many of them were the older men whose eyesight was not as keen as it used to be, and he remembers Perce Hutchins saying to him as a plane came into sight, ‘What’s it, boy?’ He also remembers seeing one of the American Flying Clipper sea planes. Quite a sight and quite a thrill! For a 4-hour stint he would earn more than a £1, which was good money for a lad in those days. Meanwhile Edward did duty in the Home Guard.

When the Americans had finished their training, and gone to France, the bomb disposal teams moved in first to clear the area of live ammunition. They did a good job, but almost inevitably they missed a few. There was a shell in the garden for instance, and even now they are still coming across empty cartridges occasionally. While this was going on, of course, it was still forbidden to go into the area, but some found ways and means of doing so. With care and a strong desire to see how things were in the village, despite the risk of live ammunition still lying about, it was possible to sneak through.

Edward and son John decided to do just that one day in August. They came by way of the cliffs overlooking the village. Nobody noticed them and they reached the house and went in. They had left the house locked up, but they needed no key now. They were glad to find the house in good condition — just a window pane broken. For all they knew, it could have burnt down, been shelled or in need of much repair, so it was a great relief to find it as it was. The surprise came though when they went out into the yard expecting to find the pig-sties, cowshed and barn. There was nothing! The area had been flattened and made into a sheltered parking lot for heavy American vehicles. Only the water tap that had been in the barn was left, attached to a wooden post in the ground. The Rover car was missing too and, as mentioned earlier, was later found in the Ley. Someone must have had some fun with it in some off-duty revel — or was it dumped there when the barn was demolished? The marble slab they had left in the shop had been shattered, and the wooden chopping block must have been used for firewood — just the metal legs were left. (John salvaged a piece of the marble from the garden, and has still got it).

With the consoling thought that the promised compensation should pay for the rebuilding and the comparatively minor damage, Edward and John went home with glowing accounts of what they had seen. It was not until October that they were finally allowed to go back home. Mrs Hannaford went with them this time to find a very different state of affairs. Now nearly all the windows were broken, all the sold brass fittings — door knocker, door handles, bell pulls — had been stolen. THREE doors, an oak pedestal for the clock and a brass container at the foot of the stairs, which used to hold a lamp, had disappeared. As Grace Bradbeer said in her book, ‘The Land Changed Its Face’, these kinds of things were hard to come by at this stage of the war, so there would be a ready market for them in unscrupulous hands. John’s mother was heart-broken, especially after the good report they had brought back just two months before. No-one had expected such things could happen. Edward said he just wished that he could have laid his hands on the culprits. It was said that lorries loaded with household goods trundled up Fore Street in Kingsbridge, and onlookers began to wonder where they were coming from. The Hannaford family could have told them about some of them.

Like everyone else, they had a vermin problem to cope with as well, but it was soon dealt with by using poison and traps. It was something they could do for themselves without calling in outside help. The compensation was duly paid, but it was calculated on 1939 valuation, which was inadequate for rebuilding the outhouses, so they were never replaced. John has the Certificate of Compensation in his album.

The war, and this episode in it, changed the lives of this family like most of the other families in similar situations. As the family grew up and became eligible for some kind of National Service, they went their several ways. Margaret, the eldest, who had been doing some hairdressing in Salcombe since she had left school, had the choice of the Land Army or factory work. She chose the latter and was sent to Cheltenham, where she met her husband, and eventually settled down there. John went into the Royal Engineers, and spent much of his time at Long Marsden, playing a lot of cricket and football which he enjoyed very much. Reg joined the Wiltshire Regiment and George went to the Ordnance Corps. Una was too young to be called up: she came back home and lived with the family until she got married, and was living in Sussex.

Around 1985, John learned something of what the house had been used for during the American occupation. An ex-Master Sergeant and his wife came to the house asking if they could see the 10ft kitchen table. Apparently, the house had been used as the soldiers’ mess. They were billeted in the cottages round about and came over to the house for their meals. This American ex-soldier wanted his wife to see where he had been in the run up to the D-Day landings.

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