大象传媒

Newquay, Cornwall

I was 10 years old in 1942 in Newquay, Cornwall. About that time the bigger hotels in the seaside resort were taken over as hospitals for soldiers and airmen. The beaches were closed with barbed wire surrounding mine fields. Very occasionally explosions were to be heard when young couples tried to get privacy by crawling through into the sand dunes on Crantock beach. The local tennis hard courts were used as parade grounds for marching practice. Once I watched a tank come down and into the local Gannel river and the crew got out to wash it. One soldier fell into the water. I still have the letter I wrote to my Father in the RAF describing this.
The Luftwaffe used to fly over North Cornwall en route to bomb South Wales. We had air raid warnings and at least once I went to sleep under the stairs even though we had a 4 x 4 metre block-walled and concrete roofed purpose built air raid shelter in our garden. German aircraft would turn tail to France and jettison their bombs. One day I cycled excitedly 4 km to see a crater in a field near Lane.
Just before the Normandy invasion there were thousands of American troops in tents in field near us beside the Gannel river. For a few weeks there were hundreds of UA army lorries parked all along the road. Their drivers were negroes from whom we used to try and cadge cigarettes.