大象传媒

My family left Holborn in 1937 and moved to Chorleywood because my father knew the war was coming. There were two big camps based at Chorleywood and they housed the 8th Airbourne, Americans and POWs. In fact, some of the POWs worked for my father but we children weren't allowed to talk to them. at first, my father didn't want them near him because of his memories of the 1st WW but then he got to know and like them. Some of them were very young too; 18 years old was about the average. In 1945, many of them stayed and married local girls instead of going back to Germany.

My father was a publican at The Gate Inn and there were two separate rooms - the public house and the saloon (where it was 1p extra for a pint of beer). Basically, you'd go into one with your work clothes on while the other was a bit more posh and you might bring your wife in with you. In 1944 after D-Day, the Americans arrived and we got friendly with them. The Colonel that was in charge of the Americans asked my father if the 'coloureds' could use the public house and whites only in the saloon. My father said, 'No, I can't do that.' but as it happened, in the end, we hardly saw any.

Beer was rationed during the war, so we were only open three days a week We opened 11am-2.30pm (12pm-2pm on Sundays) and 5.30pm to 10.30pm in the evenings (10pm on Sundays). Our brewer was Taylor Walkers, a London brewery but sometimes you couldn't get a delivery because transportation was affected by the petrol shortage. So we'd get some beer from a local brewery, Benskins, and that would arrive in a horse and cart.

The 'Operation Market Garden' (referred to in 'A Bridge too far' and the 'Arnhem Landing') left from Chorleywood, and my father was asked to store the men's hockey sticks for them while they were gone. But they never came back for them because so many of them all died. One of the officers had an 55mm and left that too, so my father had to call the MOD and get them to pick it all up after the war.

I was eight years old in 1939, so I was 14 by the end of the war and old enough to remember the gas masks etc. We kids hung around the Americans all the time because they were very generous with their sweets and other treats. I was also taken up in a DC3 or an Anson (or 'Air Speed Oxford') nearly every weekend because I was in the Air Cadets (ATC) and you could do that if accompanied by an adult.

When the Germans had dropped their bombs on London, they'd end up flying over Watford and if they had any bombs left over they'd want to drop them anyway, so there were doodlebugs in Chorleywood too. There were also something called 'butterfly bombs', which were anti-personnel's, and all of us children were warned about them. There were also lots of unexploded bombs that came down too. There were lots of golf courses with long fairways and they used to dig trenches in them to stop planes landing or invading.

Evacuees arrived around 1940 and once, as they were being driven into the area, a landmine bomb floated down and blew the bus they were in over. Luckily, they were ok and then farmed out to houses, but the driver was injured. It's ironic because they left London to escape the bombs.

Because my father owned a pub, we had a catering licence, so we managed to get biscuits etc. Kids used to collect salvage and rose slip for making syrup. We also used to collect tinfoil, which was dropped in order to try and mess up the radar. We just had no ice cream. Someone tried to make it once with powdered milk but it was disgusting. The Americans used to bring ice cream over with them and we kids queued up for jelly, butter, hams and eggs all at once. they were so generous to us; they really were, and they livened up the area. It's funny because they always asked us, "Do you have a sister at home?" and at the time I didn't understand why!

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