大象传媒

Memories of a young boy living in Bolnhurst, Bedfordshire Part Two

Part two of an oral history interview with Mr. Alec Foster conducted by Jenny Ford on behalf of Bedford Museum

鈥淭he only memory I have of the Little Staughton airfield activity was when one of the planes crashed on take off which I believe is fairly well recorded. I鈥檓 not sure whether it actually clipped the roof of the Baptist Church that stood at the top of the hill and it had to be demolished or it was demolished to make way for the aircraft taking off and so on. We cycled down, as far I remember as a family, my mother, my sisters and myself cycled down to see the wreckage of this plane, I recall that. Not much else the fragments of this plane scattered all over the place, I didn鈥檛 take any souvenirs.

As I said, it was just every day life. We knew nothing other than living in war time really because I was only two when the war came, two and a half when the war started, I don鈥檛 remember anything before that. So everything is post commencement of war. We used to listen to the wireless to pick up the News but not always knowing where the action was. You didn鈥檛 have a very good grasp maybe at a young age of world geography so it was not always easy to follow. Strangely I don鈥檛 vividly recall the cessation of hostility鈥檚 which is a strange thing because I would have been eight by that time and I would have thought that would have been a much more vivid memory than it is. It just seemed to happen. As an event I just remember some announcement that the Russians marching into Berlin and so on.

The main things that I recall from childhood are inheriting first from a cousin of mine who lived in Luton who had a very fine collection of Dinky toys, right from the beginning of when Dinky toys were made in 1934, he had this fine collection that he gave to me about in about 1942 or 1943. Because he was due to go into the Royal Air Force and he had outgrown his interest in Dinky toys and I was just getting interested in them so he gave me about 50 or 60 Dinky toys which I still have, because I鈥檓 a collector of Dinky toys. That was a vivid memory and I鈥檓 very grateful to him for because that gave me a good nucleus to start a collection.

There was no village activity really. The village was very small, I mean it hasn鈥檛 changed much, we are only talking about 100 inhabitants I suppose and on a scattered field. There was not a lot of activity until about 1942 there was a little wooden clad Mission Hall in the village where I used to go to Sunday School and they had one service on a Sunday, we used to go there on Sunday evenings. A new Pastor came, well he hadn鈥檛 really been onto the regime of a Pastorage at all before that, but a retired Methodist minister from Yorkshire who had Bedford connections moved down to Bedford again and then took over the interest of this little Mission work. The occasional social evenings were held and one of the earliest that they inaugurated was inviting, as far as I would know Bedford鈥檚 last remaining Magic Lanternist at the time to come and give a Magic Lantern show in this little Mission Hall. His name was Walter Henman, who is a famous name and well recorded in the Museum archives of course and some of his slides still live there and are occasionally shown, he was then, he looked to be a very old man. But I always say when I go out now and do my Magic Lantern shows I always say, that at the age of five I looked at this man and thought he must be at least 120, with his flying white beard but when he died in 1967 I believe it was, he was then only 89. He couldn鈥檛 have been 120 at that time so was wrong in my judgement of age! That would have been an unusual social event for us and the little Mission Hall would be full, it just only held about 50 or 60 people I suppose but it seemed to be full. We were dependent upon Mr. Henman showing the slides on a lantern powered by low octane paraffin fuel so before long the place was filled with smoke and we were grateful when the evening ended I think.

The first time Mr. Henman came to the village and showed us scenes of the Holy Land we didn鈥檛 know quite what to expect but when he got underway and he showed us first a bird鈥檚 eye view of Jerusalem from the South and then the next slide was a bird鈥檚 eye view of Jerusalem from the North and then from the East and then from West, we knew we were in for a riveting evening! It didn鈥檛 seem to get much better than that! We had a few close up shots then of bird鈥檚 eye views of the Pool of Solomon and the Garden of Gethsemane which from the geographical point of view was very nice to be able to see these things and to visualize and it brought to life some of the Bible stories of course. But it wasn鈥檛 exactly what a young child was looking for. One was looking for something more mildly amusing perhaps. But then the following year he came, he perhaps only came about three times and when the end of the war came that was about the finish of it anyway. But the next year he came he showed slides of John Bunyan鈥檚 countryside so we had a few shots of that a few slides of 鈥楶ilgrim鈥檚 Progress鈥� some of which I inherited. Because by the time he died in 1967, by that time I was then starting a collection of odd things and took an interest in photography. And a lot of his stuff came up for sale at the local auction room and I was able to buy quite a bulk of that, including magic lanterns and slides. So I have inherited some of the slides that I saw as a child.

I recall my father, he came home on leave. He was in the Royal Navy on one of the Destroyers in the Mediterranean and one was torpedoed and he was then following that incident he was in hospital for some while because that happened in 1941. About a year later in 1942 when I would have been about five he came home for a week鈥檚 convalescent leave before he went back to the sea. So during the war years I only saw him for about a week. I had this notion that because he鈥檇 sailed the seas, what I thought were the seven seas, I don鈥檛 think he鈥檇 sailed all seven seas, but he had been over most of them that he would bring me a bird in a cage. Because somewhere I had read that sailors coming home from the sea always came home with a parrot or a cockatoo, so I expected this. And I remember I was allowed to sit up late one night and Mr. Rastrick with his taxi went to the station in Bedford to fetch him home and instead of having a bird in a cage for me he had a wheelbarrow. Which has lasted longer than a bird in a cage because the wheelbarrow still survives and my two sons have grown up with this and played with it and it still sits waiting for the next generation to come along.

I don鈥檛 remember much other than that. I remember him coming home. He possibly did spend a lot of time in bed because he was obviously beaten about. I can鈥檛 remember him going off again, that must have been a sad occasion when we had to say our goodbyes to him. It was just that week he was there. And then the next time I saw him would have been in 1946 when he was discharged from the Navy at the end of the war and he went straight into hospital for major surgery and he then convalesced for some months after that. He didn鈥檛 come home until well into 1946. So I was the head of the house, being the male of the day.

My father had surgery in Bedford Hospital, Bedford South Wing and my mother regularly went on the bus or by taxi or a friendly near neighbour from Keysoe took her to see him. And indeed we went along at weekends, Saturdays and Sundays perhaps we went with her. But we were not allowed in to the Hospital Wards being children, we were not permitted to go and see him. We sat out in the gardens and on one occasion he had a bed in one of the Wards overlooking the south side of the hospital, the gardens that then where there and he would wave to us from a distance but we never got near to speak to him.鈥�

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