大象传媒

1944/45

My memories of the D-day period or the preparations are as follows. Just round the corner from our house by Oakdale School, the main road came down from Ringwood and turned at the crossroads to go round the harbour to Hamworthy or carry on to Weymouth. I remember for several days we must have had hundreds of army Lorries and tanks coming down to the crossroads and turning in front of us. The instructions to turn were given by mounted motorcycle dispatch riders who preceded each convoy of vehicles. I remember the singing of the waving troops in the Lorries and the tarmac road surface being badly damaged by the tanks. Of course at that time probably D-day -1 to -4, one did not appreciate what all these troop and vehicle movements were for.
My brother tells me that on D-day he saw a troop glider come down in a field near us, and all the troops get out with their blackened faces and kit. Apparently their glider toe rope had broken. They probably came from Tarrent Rushden an airfield near Wimbourne, Dorset, about 5 miles from Poole. This was the airfield where the towed gliders for the Pegasus bridge assault took off from.

By this time in 1944 in the war the air raids were few and far between. I remember in our area there were some large houses where American white GI's were billeted, and a few miles away near Wimbourne at Merley, there was a large camp of coloured American GI's. These places fell silent on the 6th June, D-day, and the houses and the camp were completely deserted.

For the expected D-day casualties, there were several military Hospitals created in the Dorset/Hampshire regions; they were at Blandford, (for the Americans), Kingston Lacy house near Wimbourne, ( for the Canadians), and St. Leonard's, near Ferndown, for the Americans).

In our area of the country there were no V1 flying bombs or V2 rockets landing. I remember my father being very upset when he heard that one of his elder brothers "Howard", his wife, and three year old daughter, my cousin, had been killed by a V1 flying bomb just outside Guildford, Surrey, in the summer of 1944. This was off-track for London, but the Germans were deflecting their course after receiving false information from German double agents of earlier landing sites in London.

Our war came to an end in May 1945, and was celebrated in our road, by a children's VE party with the tables and chairs in the middle of the road and all the parents contributing some sandwiches, Jellies, cakes etc. Food rationing was still in force then, and indeed continued until 1957. I remember frequently queuing up at the butchers for my mother at the corner shops and seeing the ration coupons cut out of the ration books.

Later in life (1950/51) I attended Southampton University College, travelling by train every day, and I remember coming out of the railway station and seeing the vast extent of the bomb damage to the city of Southampton, which at that time was not rebuilt.

The radio played a large part in the war for us, provided the battery accumulator was charged, with the news broadcasts, Churchill's speeches, and the station channels preceding their announcements with Beethoven's 5th Symphony, the letter V in Morse code banged on a drum.

In the New Forrest at Beaulieu was an SOE training establishment, and apparently the trainee agents practised their skills in the Bournemouth shops and the lower pleasure gardens. I might have unknowingly rubbed shoulders with them.

This concludes my wartime recollections.

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