大象传媒

This story was submitted to the Peoples' War site by Lesley of Torbay Library Services on behalf of Ms A Watkin and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Shorter Memories

Searchlights. From my parents' bedroom window I could see the two brilliant searchlights combing the sky. These were housed in two separate rounded constructions, some distance apart. They looked like part of the high, reddish sea wall.

Barrage Ballons. Today's Lymington Coach Park was our swing-park in the 1940's. This tailed off to a grassy area towards today's bottle-banks. I remember seeing a large silver barrage balloon lying undamaged to the right of the swings area. I wondered what on Earth the balloon was for.

Belgrave Road. This was the scene of several incidents for me. One day we were going down it, when out of one of the hotels, issued some troops. I was puzzled by their uniform.
"Mummy, are these soldiers?" I asked. She glanced at the column of airforce men.
"They are soldiers with wings," she joked.
I was mystified and none the wiser.

Tanks. Going down to the beach, we'd reached where Belgrave Road meets the bottom of Shedden Hill. From the direction of Rock Walk came a strange grinding, flapping, growling noise. Tanks! They were moving in the direction of Corbyn Head.
I was fascinated by the sets of wheels revolving in their caterpillar tracks. I don;t know what year this was: it might have been the summer of 1943. Were they, I now wonder, going on their way via Totnes to Slapton and Torcross for practising the D-Day landings?

Traffic. Blackout meant showing no lights of any sort. But cars had black paper, with a cross-shaped slit covering their headlamps. Belgrave Road (and obviously other roads) had its trees marked with a headlamp-high band of white paint.
Pedestrians must shine sparingly used hand torches down on the ground. It was lucky there were so few cars. So few in fact, my friend and I could play in Barton Road. "Look out, there's a car coming!" was a very infrequent warning!
When the Amercian troops were here, Mum and I were going down Belgrave Road. We passed a small column of them going up the hill. One of them pressed something into my hand. I was puzzled at the flat "sweet" - my very first taste of chewing gum!

Jeeps. The American troops msut have loathed our small, winding roa
ds and Barton Road was no exception. It must have been about 1943 when, walking with Mum up the road, I noticed lots of large stones strewn across it. A glance at No 22's wall explained them. Some jeep must have swerved something, maybe a pedestrian (no pavement, only high walls both sides) and demolished a large bit of the wall to the right of the gate. Even today, the wall shows a pinkier shade of cement of the repair made by the two American soldiers sent to make good the damage.

Defence. The beach could be a disappointment for me and other people. Sometimes we would go down hoping for a swim and sand only to find an X-shaped barbed-wire barricade blocking the entry steps to the beach. This would happen if the wrong sort of shells were on the shore. The fixed barbed wire in great rolls could be a danger to clothes. Mum once tore her dress as she passed to go down.

Watcombe Beach. This had scaffolding poles erected along the shoreline. To swim you had to duck under chest high horizontal poles to reach the water. I rememeber finding a toilet seat and trying to float on it, much to my Dad's ambarrassment at my playing with such a thing.

Window protection. In case of blast, a transparent thin film was painted on to the window area. I can't remember my parents puting it on, but I do recall scraping it off the kitchen window because the stuff had begun to peel.

Food. For the three of us, the daily milk ration was a quart bottle with its sunk cardboard lid and the inner bit you picked out to pour. This was delivered in Barton road by Tom Potman in his horse and cart. He also had a milk churn with pint and half-pint ladles. These were hooked over the churn and were shaped like food tins at their ends. He'd deliver this next door by filling a jug. To this day I don't know why they had it delivered this way.
Mum didn't like the dried egg, but preferred the National Dried Milk in its blue and silver tin. A tinned fish called "Snoek" was available, but I believe not generally liked. Meat wasn't much, so Mum would get a rabbit from the "rabbitman". Alas, I didn't like rabbit.
Fresh eggs could be preserved in isinglass. I suppose this was a pre-rationing stock-up. These eggs made me disgusted. Nasty, frothy eggs in a bucket of water.They looked as if they were in spit to me! Also there was nowhere else to put them but under the stairs, which was also our loo.
Toilet rolls were in short supply, so many of us had to use use cut up newspaper, which didn't bother me at all.
Ration Books - Mum managed to drop ours our off her shopping basket. It would be a fuss to get replacements, but, oh joy! - some kind person returned the adult beige and my blue one through our door. In shops, from these vital books some coupons were snipped out - others had to be crossed off with a thick black wax crayon on receipt of the goods. Clothing coupons were separate and not included in the food books.

Blackout. How well I remember my Dad's grumble when lighting up time drew near. Ours were black painted canvas on frames made to measure for each window. Where they were kept in daytime, I don't know. So, even the long daylight hours of "double summer" time gave way to darkness, blackout it was. The window had to appear as if no light was on.
One evening Mum was cooking. A lady warden knocked. The dreaded "you're showing a light."
"Where?" Mum flapped, trying to get the meal out of the oven.
"Come here - what's this?" Dad went to see the tiny chink of offending light.
"Hold your coat over it!" yelled Mum, "till I can do something about it." (She knew that Dad wasn't all that observant and was glad the warden had showed him.)

Bombs. Thankfully I only saw the aftermath. I remember a crater near the left side of the drive to Cockington Court. It was about 6 feet deep and about as wide as a medium-sized house room.
Union Street, where the Insurance/Social Services buildng now stands, had been, I believe, an ice-cream parlour or cafe. A bomb neatly sliced down a wall, revealing an undamaged toilet pan, cistern; the lot. Mum, down town the following day, noticed something. Someone, she told us later, had climbed up and covered the pan with a sack. As no-one had been in there, Mum couldn't think why.

The Siren and Taking Cover. Once, when we were in
All Saints Church, Bamfylde Road, I think we'd reached the sermon. The wail began. Mr Petty, the vicar, told us to move to the side aisle of the church. "Remember we are in God's hands" he intoned as we scuffled to comply. I couldn't see what difference it made, if a bomb hit us.
The usual place, when the siren went at home, was under the stairs. We'd go and shut the door. Mum had the best seat, the toilet one. Mine was on the floor back to the electric meter and near that bucket of eggs! Dad stood back to the wall and facing Mum. Wasn't the "All Clear" a welcome sound!

Sights. Corbyn Head toilets had "Teas" painted on the roof. A gunner lurked there.
Sandbags surrounded the main Post Office. In the field above Torre Station, sheep were grazed. At harvest time I spent quite a while watching the binder-reaper cutting the corn and next they were put into stooks. All this could be seen from our lounge window.
There were Nissan huts in the grounds of Audley Park School (Torquay Community College), but I think it was just after the war that I noticed them. Deserted, a friend and I snooped inside the corrugated huts.

All the foregoing experiences were personally witnessed by me during the war.

Angela Watkin