Did you see the Evacuees?

In the first weeks of the war I moved with my parents to Coronation Place and I can remember playing football on the London Road and seeing a large group of children coming down the road, two-by-two, hand in hand with WVS (Women Volunteer Service) or Red Cross people. They didn't appear to have anything with them, apart from a little parcel or attaché case. They were dropping them off at the houses as they came along. They were girls from the Green School at Tottenham and some had their brothers with them and they also had two teachers. I think because they were girls we became quite friendly.

It was much different they following year when the ‘Barnardo Boys’ came to Wangford Hall. There were 20-30 boys there then and it was a bit different as there were fights and arguments. They were quite friendly though, but they had two male teachers who were quite strict so if they were caught fighting they got punished while we didn't! They integrated into the local schools and there were some good friendships and some of them came back later. But there was a different feeling for the evacuees, whether you felt sorry for them, or because they were girls, they were a bit pitiful as they didn't seem to have much with them.


Did rationing affect your family much?

My dad had two allotments and so we had seasonal vegetables. Rabbits were about too. I suppose the hardest things to get were sugar, tea and butter, but you just accepted that you weren't going to have them. There was bread, or toast, and dripping (left over fat from cooking meat). There was always school dinners and that was a meal you didn't have to supply. The meals were comparable to what you would get today and lots of children would stay for a school dinner. I remember one example of Shepherd’s Pie and chocolate pudding and custard.

Perhaps not every week, but most weeks, we would have rabbit at home. In the Harvest time, along with other boys, we would bike up to Brandon Fields to the cornfields. As the binders would circle the fields and get nearer to the centre of the field there would be dozens of rabbits come out and the boys would catch a few. Maybe the foreman would throw you one and say, "Here you are boy".


What can you tell me about the Air Raids?

When they tested the sirens one Sunday morning, me and some boys went to the Police Station to watch it go off. It was quite noisy!

When the sirens first went off at night me and my family woke up and went downstairs. That happened for the first week, then we took the attitude that if they were going to hit us they would hit us upstairs or downstairs and so we didn't wake up after that. You would often hear the German bombers going over and on one occasion there was a stick of bombs that fell roughly on line with the flight path of R.A.F. Lakenheath. One bomb fell behind a house on Thetford Road and another on Lingheath. I remember biking to Lingheath to get some shrapnel. It seems strange now, but there was no big crater just a hole in the ground and so we hunted around for some shrapnel.

I think that in that same stick of bombs one fell into an asparagus field off Bury Road and some more fell off towards Mayday Farm. That’s the only actual air raid where bombs were dropped locally. The only other incident was the dinner time one where a stray plane came over, firing machine guns. I was going home for dinner at that time. I crouched against a fence in Coronation Place and watched it fly past. It was still firing at that time, flying toward R.A.F. Lakenheath, a long slim plane. I think it was a Dornier. When I got back to school I heard that there were two bullets that had hit the school. One went into the cookery room and the other was in the classroom. We saw the hole in the ceiling after dinner.

Later we heard the Doodlebugs. They had a particular drone and it was well known that when the engine cut out, well, they would then come down. They didn't wake you up at night, but if you heard them, then you would sit there hoping they would pass over. It wasn't every night, but it was something that people heard. They knew what they were and where they were going, and when the engine stopped they were coming down. But it didn't really affect us, other than it being a talking point.


There seemed to be a lot of fund raising in the town.

Every year, I believe, there would be one week set aside where they would raise money for a specific cause. I think one was ‘Aid for Russia’. There would be various events, whist drives, dances and a big parade. That would start in the High Street and they would be collecting money on the way. I remember there being a bandstand too.

What was it like for you during the war in Brandon?

There was so much going on for a young boy that it was a little bit exciting really. There wasn't much school football, or much out of town activities, so the war was the main topic of conversation. So if there was a bomb dropped, say on Lingheath, then you would get on your bike and go looking for shrapnel. There were so many people and planes about, tanks too, so yes, I guess it was exciting.

For a boy of my age, I guess they were quite exciting times. We saw so many planes. Especially at the time of Arnhem. The sky was full of planes and gliders and you then knew something was happening. The same could be said at the time of Normandy. Probably a week before there was a lot of activity with the tanks moving out from the London Road camp. They went down to the railway station where they had enlarged the sidings and built ramps and they moved the tanks onto the trains. I remember one fella saying, "We’re off tomorrow. We’re going! I can’t tell you where we‘re going, but we’re going!"

After Lakenheath became operational I would watch the planes from my bedroom window in Coronation Place. I could see these Stirlings which were large planes, roaring and appearing to be struggling to get into the air as they were so heavily loaded. At night I could see their exhaust flames. I should have been going to bed at that time, but I would sit there watching until there were no more planes.

I do remember once there was a Stirling crashed at the Brandon Fields. Word got around of the crash, and as boys will be boys so a gang of us got on our bikes to go looking for souvenirs. We rode up there and there wasn't much left there to be honest. The guards up there kept telling us to get back, but we kept coming back. There was this parachute by the side of a track and this airman guard said, "Don’t look under that!" Well, of course we then just had to have a look. So when we did eventually get the chance to have a look there was a flying boot with half a leg in it. It didn't appear to upset anyone though, maybe because of our ages and we talked about it for ages. It wasn't until later I felt an element of sorrow that there were 8 or 9 men lost in that crash.


Did you have much contact with the troops billeted in the town?

There were soldiers in the main camp and in the Brandon House. There was a canteen in the Church Institute, a canteen in the Baptist Chapel and there was a building on the green near the cinema. Actually the boys were inclined to drift into the edges of the camp, there wasn't the security that there might be now, and you were reasonably well looked after. Some of the troops gave you cakes. There wasn't any trouble really and they integrated reasonably well.


American G.I.s

As I said earlier they enlarged the railway sidings also to serve the bomb dump at Elveden, probably near where Centre Parcs is now, and I think it was one of the biggest dumps in East Anglia. They brought a tremendous amount of bombs to the area for the American Air Force. We had never seen such big trucks as the ones the Americans used to collect their bombs. Huge trucks roaring up the High Street with their open exhausts in convoy up the Bury Road to the bomb dump. It was also probably one of the first times that people in Brandon had seen ‘black’ people and most of these drivers seemed to be. These Americans seemed to be excitable. Roaring up the road, not stopping for the crossroads, shouting, singing and laughing. It would seem to be a big thing for them roaring up the road. The fact that they were loaded with bombs meant nothing to them. But if you were coming out of school on the Market Hill they would often throw chewing gum and sweets.
There was probably more trouble at the dances with the Americans than there were with the British troops. The Paget Hall was the place for dances at that time, also the Church Institute, but if there were any trouble at the dance then we saw the American white-helmeted Military Police. They were cruel. They would thump the trouble-makers across the back of the head and throw them in to the back of the jeep. Just like that! There wasn't any questions. They would just wade in. I never noticed much friction between the locals and the Americans because they did appear to be free with what they had got. Mind you there wasn't any Americans based nearby.


And Brandon’s Home Guard?

They were very active. One day a week and maybe Sundays they would have a parade or exercise. I suppose there wasn't much else they could do other than man the road blocks. Most of the roads had concrete blocks halfway across the road and barbed-wire barriers that they could pull across. There were several roads where there were roadblocks and places where there were pillboxes. One was on the corner of Rattler’s Road. There were also blocks of concrete with spigot posts where you could position a mortar.


What are your memories of VE and VJ Days?

Everyone was excited and I think it came as a surprise that it happened so quickly. Mr. Henman’s shop, where ‘G & I’ is now, was a cycle and radio shop. It had a flat roof and there were floodlights, fairy lights and speakers on there. The road outside was blocked off with dancing well into the night and a very large bonfire in the pit down Thetford Road. Everyone seemed to be out, I believe there was also dancing in the Church Institute.

For VJ night there were dances in the Paget Hall and the Church Institute and another very large bonfire in the pit in the Thetford Road. There was a lot of thunder-flashes and firecrackers which found their way into Brandon from the corrugated iron ammunition shelter on the Santon Downham Road. I’m not sure whether the young boys found that they were there and easy to raid.

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