Jeanne Curtis

SECOND WORLD WAR MEMORIES. JEANNE CURTIS

My parents were farmers living within the second line of defence in Hampshire and very affected by wartime events. They were constrained in what crops they grew, where they grew them and also how far they could travel to move crops, livestock etc., so like everyone in the country we were very aware of what was happening.

We had several lots of evacuees living with us during the five years, some of whom became such friends that they were still in contact with my mother when she died in 2000! They came from London, Southampton, Portsmouth and Poole, some very distressed without anything except the garments they stood in and some better equipped. Two little girls who came to us from Southampton had nothing except what they were wearing so that my mother’s first job was to use whatever clothes she could find from friends or our own cupboards and alter them to fit the girls in order that they had something to wear to school, a walk of two miles away in the local village. It often happened that parents would understandably, take their children home when the bombing was lighter, but this sadly meant that often when they returned to us, they had impetigo or nits, and I can remember being painted with purple gentian and how my mother cried as she tried to clear the nits from Audrey and Dolly’s hair! Poor Mummy, she had never had such things in her house and she worried that people would think that she was dirty!

My first brush with the war I cannot remember as I was in a pram in the orchard (fresh air was essential then!!). Apparently, there was an aerial dog fight immediately over us and my mother grabbed me but didn’t know where to run with me for safety. It ended with the German plane crashing over at Whitsbury and the Englishman bailing out and landing in the trees in our meadow. My father fished the young man out, only the worse of a broken collar bone; Mother patched him up, gave him tea and off he went. A year and a half later his mother came to thank my parents for their kindness and told that sadly he had been shot down later. Such a waste of fine young men.

The first memory I have was an air-raid and my father lifting me out of my cot to see the lights etc. I remember very clearly looking into the sky and seeing the tiny silver planes high above in the searchlights, then turning my head and seeing it all over my father’s shoulder reflected in the wardrobe mirror. My parents were amazed when I told them this because I must have been very young to still be in a cot, but I described it so exactly that they eventually agreed that my positioning of furniture in the room (moved to accommodate all the evacuees in the other three bedrooms) proved it must have impinged itself on my memory!

Of course, some things were quite funny; my cousin Rosemary lived on my Grandfather Rumbold’s farm in Damerham. Like many farms at that time, it was in the village street, and when I went to visit (strapped into a seat on the back of my mothers bicycle aged possibly four), Rosemary, dark haired and me blonde, would climb onto the milk-stand and swing our legs and smile at the American soldiers going past in their jeeps! Needless to say, being kind-hearted, they threw us sweeties or gum! Luxury in those days of nothing! If our mothers had known, we would have been in big trouble!I

I will never forget V E Day, sitting on my father’s shoulders whilst he danced in the town square of Fordingbridge with my mother and every other pretty lady!! I can remember the music, the excitement, and hanging on to Daddy’s head in case I fell off! How we celebrated, but then everyone did!

The village of Rockbourne gave a party for the children at the end of the war, so kind of them. Sadly, my main memory of it was the jelly! A beautiful red colour, but far too much gelatine and so hard it bounced!! Needless to say, I couldn’t face jelly for many years! But I was only five!

In a strange way the war lasted longer than just the five years, because it was a long time before the prisoners of war, who had helped during haymaking, harvest, and hoeing returned home. We had Germans, Poles, and Italians working on the farm during the peak times. My mother used to collect them from the camp, five at a time in the big old Morris Oxford car. How they all fitted in I don’t know; a friend asked if she wasn’t afraid of them all; to which she replied, ‘No, I’ve got the tyre lever down by the brake if I need it!’ Still, most prisoners seemed to be only too happy to be out of the war and were very kind to the English children. They made beautiful toys from old packing cases and gave them to us. I had mine for many years until it broke with over-use!! My father really liked one German chap who worked with us for longer than just the harvest etc. His name was Johannes, and he was a farmer’s son from Austria. He was a very good worker and always knew what my father wanted. He told my father how they farmed in the mountains which really interested Daddy, and then said: ‘One day, you, I, we fight the Russians.’ I remember my father was very struck by that as the Russians were our allies then.

The final thing is the bomb which fell without exploding in my grandfather’s field blinding a young bull he had there. The force of the bomb blew out all the windows in the village of Damerham, but apparently one of the bands had slipped and it didn’t explode! Just as well, as it was one of the biggest dropped during the war, and it landed in a field plumb in the middle of three sheep droves lined with Nissen huts full of ammunition down the sides!! If it had gone off the whole village would have blown up!! It took several years and two shafts to get it; it became caught in an underground chalk stream and kept slipping down the hillside! I clearly remember looking down the shaft and seeing the tiny figures of the prisoners of war working on getting it out, what a job! However, it did come out and I have a photocopy of newspaper report about the occasion, and it shows the bomb on a lorry, lots of men round it and Grandad there with Spider his dog…..never missed anything Spider! Rosemary and I were probably six or seven years old by this time, and still not wanting to miss anything exciting!

Life is constantly coming up with odd connections, and one of these occurred when I moved to Kingston. In November, I attended the Remembrance Day service wearing my late husband’s medals. He was several years older than me and had served in the tank corps, the 25^th Hussars, an old Indian regiment. Les Terry, who lived in Yellands at that time, approached me and said that he had noticed I had the Burma Star amongst my medals. I replied that they had been my late husbands where-upon he asked where in Burma my husband had served. “Oh” I replied, “ its not very well known, but he was in the ‘Admin Box’, with the Gurkhas, they were cut off for six weeks”. To my surprise, Les smiled and said yes he knew, he had been in the air crews who had flown in and dropped the supplies necessary to these cut-off troops! My husband would have been delighted to meet him and thank him!

Those were difficult and sad days for many, and our life on the farm was quite sheltered in comparison, but my parents would make a treat from nothing and make a picnic from jam sandwiches if necessary. Daddy would make an outing of going down to Parkstone to the breakers yard for a spare part for the tractor or some other machinery and then sneak us on to see something else like the defences of barbed wire and metal at Branksome Chine, or the flying sea planes at Poole Harbour. It was hard work and long days, but my mother loved working alongside my father and there was much happiness and laughter, dancing and music.