|
Felbridge at War 1939-1945 Part2 Souvenir of memories from people of Felbridge to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II 
Kissed the ground
No Air Raid Shelter
Later in the war, the Germans launched a new weapon, the Doodle Bug. These were launched in France and came across the Channel aimed at London and the South East. There were two kinds, V1’s and V11’s. They were rockets which flew across the sky with blue flames coming out of the back. I used to sleep upstairs on my own and could hear the hum of the engines going overhead. I would lie very still and keep my fingers crossed that they wouldn’t glide down anywhere near us and land as they landed with a terrific bang and course a lot of destruction.
Family dived for cover under table
Today, Doris Trefine still lives in the same house in Copthorne road where her family dived for cover under a table during air raids and spared part of their precious ration to give a welcome cuppa to convoys of soldiers on their way to Aldershot. Well known as the area’s ‘paper girl’ until her retirement at the age of 80 last year [2004], Mrs Trefine still has vivid memories of the war days. Just before war broke out she left school at the age of 15 and started work at Hogger’s Nursery. ‘There was nothing round here then in the way of work like there is the Imberhorne Estate today’, she said. ‘And there were only the shops, the post office or the laundry in East Grinstead. I quite enjoyed pricking out plants and digging up trees’. Before moving to Copthorne road in 1937, Mrs Trefine and her widowed mother lived in a house opposite Hedgecourt Lake. Her father, Sydney Curtis, was part of the East Grinstead bakery family and he died at the age of 29 after 12 years in the navy. ‘I remember a bomb falling at the back of the garage at North End and the German plane that dropped the bomb on the school at Lingfield’, she said. ‘We heard it was meant to aim for Hobb’s Barracks and the crew had been told it was on land between two lakes. But they couldn’t find it which is why they dropped the bomb on Lingfield’. Other members of Mrs Trefine’s family lived with them and the fear of air raids was ever present, she said, ‘We were obviously worried because we didn’t know what was going to happen’, she said, ‘Quite a few were dropped round here – 28 in one night once. One Sunday night a bomb came down in front of the church. It cracked the bell but they managed to save four pieces of stained glass. But they lost the cat’. News of Victory in Europe came while Mrs Trefine was at work at the nursery. The staff asked John Hogger it it meant they could have the following day off. ‘At first he said no but I think he was only kidding us’, she said. ‘Then he said we had to turn up to do the watering and after that we could go home’. Her mother found flags and bunting to hang in front of the house and young Doris joined her aunt foa s aday at Ashurst Wood ‘where we had a ramble round the rocks’.
She recalls seeing East Grinstead decked with flags and knew parties and other events were arranged for the younger children in Felbridge.
Bullets fell like rain
School days during the war
I remember taking large glass jam jars to school and being given them back fall of drinking chocolate powder from Canada; it was the best tasting thing for years. Made up of chocolate powder, sugar and powdered milk, I can still remember how lovely it tasted. We used to help the school gardener cum caretaker to dig and plant up the garden for the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign. All the vegetables were used in the school dinners. At 11 years old I went to the Senior School in De la Warr Road, East Grinstead, there we often had to go down the air raid shelters. Various girls sang, recited and told stories to entertain us. There was one particular girl who used to sing long songs in Welsh which we never understood, but she had a good voice. There was a pom-pom gun on top of the water tower opposite and when we sat near the escape hatch at the end of the shelter, you could hear it firing at enemy aircraft overhead.
One day in the 1940’s we were going to school by bus (which used to drop us outside the school) but we were unable to go any further that what was the Co-Op. There had been bombs dropped on the cinema and up through the town the night before. Living where we did we hadn’t heard the bombing and it really was a shock, especially as there were some schoolmates we would never see again and others that were affected long after the bombing with nerves and shock. Gradually things got back to relative normality, with Sainsbury’s being moved into the big church at the bottom of Rice’s Hill. A plant man set up his stall on the bomb site that was Bridgelands and sold dahlias to people for their gardens.
Rabbits
Air-Raid Siren
23rd Armoured Brigade
Ten Green Bottles
Fire Drill on the Green
Egg rations
We kept half a dozen chickens at the bottom of our garden and these were kept in a run during the daytime and shut inside a shed during the night. One night a fox got in and bit the heads off all our chickens, leaving us with no means of getting eggs. What made it more embarrassing was that my father had agreed to supply a neighbour with eggs and they too had forfeited their egg ration in favour of extra meal for our chickens. As a consequence neither household had any chickens or an egg ration!
Spitfires and Hurricanes
Sea Grass Mats
Air Raid Wardens
‘Dig for Victory’
Anderson Shelters
Wartime treats
Convoys
Hedgecourt Lake fenced
End of War celebrations
Dog fight
Bought a shop to beat rationing
I remember the bomber that crashed on the garage, old Simpson’s Garage; we watched that being shot down. It absolutely demolished the bungalow and it left one room untouched. Old Simpson used to sell eggs from that room and it never cracked one egg and the old dog, who used to sit under the table, got up and walked out of there wagging its tail as if nothing had happened. The rest of the house was completely demolished. How it missed the garage I do not know. It was a Polish fighter that shot him out the sky; they peppered him till he hit the ground. Then they found the crew, many years later, over the back in the woods there. They’d baled out, come down and they were found later on. It was not many years ago that they were found. Found them in Chartham Park side of Lowdells Lane. It was like the one that bombed East Grinstead, when he had those sixteen bombs down through the town, that plane was shot down and they found that when they surveyed the M25, and the crew were still in it. When they found that plane they proved it was the one that bombed East Grinstead because there were only two German planes went up that day. One came back and the other one didn’t, and the serial number and all that tied up with the one that had bombed the town.
He did do a bit of damage that one; there are no two ways about it. Mind you, can you wonder at it, you’ve got Caffyn’s Garage standing there in the middle of the town, an army repair depot with all their vehicles standing out there. I was lucky that night; I went to see the film the night before, all my mates went the following night. I lost a lot of mates in there. I said come on lets go the Thursday night, I believe, but they said no, but I said I was going that night, as I had to go on the farm the following night. About half past five, I believe they dropped it. One of my mates, Roy Owden, he’s only just died, he ran out of the cinema as the roof was coming down, he’d left his Mac behind, blow me if he didn’t run back in to get it! He didn’t get killed but he ran in to get his Mac, he thought I’m not going home without my Mac.’
Felbridge Home Guard 1940-42
Officers
The North End Squad, comprising Perce Buckland, Bill Fynn, Frank Terry, Eric Martin, Mr Dawson and Mr Gibbs, were on duty at Wards Farm in August 1940, when three bombs dropped at St John’s Church, by a plane approaching from the west, caught by a single searchlight. Mr Dawson (owner of North End Post Office shop) decided to find out where they had dropped, set off on his bike and promptly rode into the crater in the road. A road block was created at Wards Farm for checking ID’s and the Home Guard used the upper part of the barn when not on Patrol. A look-out post was formed at The Kennels with good views, heavily sand bagged and could have been defended. Part of the stable block at the Felbridge Hotel was used for night duties, resting between patrols round the village and brewing up. Parades were arranged for Sunday mornings at 10.00 and Thursday evenings at 20.00, usually in the Institute. Route marches and exercises were held, such as manning the pill boxes on the defence line at Horne with the Irish Guards. Lectures by Lt. Thomas, Sgt. Kelf and Irish Guards’ Officers on map reading, gas, road block tactics, grenades and bombs were given. Pay Parades were held monthly and a Church Parade was held at Felbridge on 29th March 1942.
Rifle practice took place at Marden Park and on the outdoor range at Hobbs Barracks. Drill and lectures were also given by Irish Guards at Hobbs Barracks. PT was held at Baldwins Hill on Monday evenings. Fighting Patrols were also formed during 1941, led by younger Lance Corporals.
‘Keep Mum’
Lavender’s blue
Memories from the Hedgecourt area
We thought they were spies!
Tales from the ‘Flutter Bat’ tree
On another day a hurricane was doing a victory roll over the village and lost one of its wheels, this too landed up at Gullege. The RAF men made tents out of the wings whilst waiting to be picked up. They also let the children sit in the cockpit.
Another day there was a spitfire that ran out of petrol during the Battle of Britain and landed at the back of Taddy Redman’s field, [Birches Cottage, Crawley Down Road]. Taddy was working in the field at the time, ploughing, needless to say it gave him a fright! Danny Sargent went had breakfast with the men one morning and eventually the plane was taken apart and taken away.
World War II memories
Our house was a wooden one with a small coal range for cooking. We had a tin bath in the kitchen and boiled kettles to heat the water. My mother totally disliked ration books and threw them away at the first opportunity. With four adults and four children to support from the land it was a scratched living and although we kept chickens we seldom ate them ourselves. The bread was delivered by horse and wagon but was very course as was the porridge with many pieces of husk in it. There was enough to eat but it was very basic. We collected milk from Prevett’s farm in ‘The Wood’. With the arrival of Jewish families who occupied six bungalows in Felcot Road, the need for vegetables increased and my father cultivated more land. My mother had a very hard life but was most of the time tough and cheerful. With two young babies and my father’s illness she had to draw the water up from the well in a bucket – no pump, carry the bucket of dirty water out, feed the chicken and much more. For days before every Christmas she was plucking and trussing chickens. Boiler chickens were for family consumption at Christmas only. We children slept in the cellar under my grandparent’s wooden house for a long time. The lavvy was way up the garden path with often a muddy patch to go through. An air-raid shelter had been dug underground in Grandpa’s orchard but was not used a great deal. Grandma prayed with us sometimes during air-raids. At Felbridge School I remember being in the shelter a few times. We had signing of songs we knew and some that the evacuees sung such as ‘Green Door’. Mrs Rose was their teacher and very strict. She was my teacher for a while so evacuees were mixed into all three classes. Previously there had only been two classrooms- one each side of the assembly room/dining room in which a public library run on Friday evenings. The name of the man who ran the library escapes me but I remember he wore plus fours. My cousin Yvonne came to Felbridge School for a short time around 1941. She and my maternal grandmother stayed with our paternal grandparents because they had been bombes out of their house in Horsham. Later, when I was at St Peter’s School, our teacher was taking us to Brooklands swimming pool and told us that the news of the D Day landings had been announced on the wireless that morning. At senior school I remember the windows of the canteen of the old Sackville School (now Chequer Mead Arts Centre) were shattered by enemy aircraft machine gun fire but fortunately my class arrived back at school from Brooklands after the event. I also remember that there was a soup day held at the school on Fridays. David and I were evacuated to Aberystwyth in 1943. The first billet was with the station master. I struggled trying to remember what my mother looked like. In one of my father’s letters, which I still have, he wrote that ninety-one doodle bugs had passed over ‘The Wood’ in one day. The Felbridge Herb Gatherers were after my time at Felbridge School but I do remember I took rose hips and coltsfoot flowers sometimes. I feel very ashamed to say that in order to supply the fighting soldiers abroad with parcels of cigarettes, chocolate and socks; I went into my grandfather’s garden and pulled his radishes, bunched them up and sold them to the neighbours without his permission. I had to sit on a chair and not talk until I had admitted that I was the culprit! We saw the glow in the sky when London/Croydon was being bombed, the barrage balloons and search lights. We heard and saw the doodle bugs (VI), (‘Cheeky blighter’ my father said, ‘he’s got his lights on’) – the flames that propelled them came from the tail. There were VII rockets which were silent until they hit the ground and exploded. Towards the end of the war ‘The Wood’ was littered with strips of silver paper. This was to stop the enemy detecting our newly used radar system. The English fighter planes went across on their missions in formation but returned limping home – three at a time. Mostly the wireless was switched on only for the news. My grandfather, being French, was quite shocked when he heard that France had capitulated. His Italian, or may be Belgian friends, Mr and Mrs Koda, were on board the Lucitania ship when it was sunk during the crossing of the Atlantic . I remember the Canadian soldiers were camped at Domewood. On one occasion they were cooking and eating in the short length of lane which runs from Lake View Road to Felcot Road in Furnace Wood. My brother enjoyed being there with them. Although Grandpa had lived in England for fifty-four year, the Crawley Down policeman cycled to check his papers once a month for most of the war. He didn’t leave home often so he enjoyed having a chat with the policeman, the coalman and Mr Steer when he brought the paraffin for our lamps, heaters and primus.
I’ll end my reminiscences with tulips. I think the staff of Timothy Whites and Taylor’s must have been quite amused at me venturing into their shop week after week and asking for tulip bulbs when we were at the start of the war. I didn’t see the film ‘No Hiding Place’ which was filmed at Hobbs Barracks, but I have the book written by Corrie ten Boom, on which the film is based, in which she writes ‘No tulips turned fields into carpets of colour: the bulbs had all been eaten’.
An evacuee remembers
We settled into our new quarters and I started school at Felbridge Primary, just down the road. At that time there were just three classes; infants – Miss Kilmister, juniors – Miss Coutts and seniors – Miss Dowding, who was also the Head. I was quickly promoted to the juniors as I could already read. There I met Pam Roberts and we became inseparable. We had a nativity play at school, and in the spring a grand production of Cinderella. My first, and last, leading role! Two other London families were also billeted in Felbridge; Mrs Wilkins and her daughter Anne and Mrs Ennis with her daughter Barbara and baby Peter. The three London mums would meet us from school each afternoon and we would go for a long walk before going back to our billets for dinner. Pam tagged along with us, but on her first outing she fell into Hedgecourt Lake, so our mothers first met over a wet and bedraggled Pamela. Thus started two remarkable friendships. Our mothers remained friends until my mother's death in 1990 and now, sixty five years later, Pam and I are still fast friends.
Our walks took us to Gullege, Imberhorne, along Cuttinglye Road to Furnace Wood and to Hedgecourt Mill and Lake, Furnace Lake and Wiremill Lake. Sometimes it was a very long walk, three or four miles and sometimes a shorter one if the weather was bad. A favourite walk in spring was to Gibbshaven Farm where there was a field of wild daffodils (Lent lilies). Pam and I would each pick a bunch and clutching them tightly, set out back to the Green and home. By the time we reached the school, our little legs were tired and so were our hands, looking back there was a sad trail of dropped daffodils on the road.
We also gathered rose hips to take to the collection point at Felbridge School where we would get rosehip syrup, concentrated orange juice and cod liver oil – all guaranteed to keep us healthy on our meagre wartime diets. We picked blackberries from a huge thicket in the Park, just beyond where the Copthorne and Crawley Down Roads met at the point of the Green. We pulled the leaves down with walking sticks and scrambled to pick and eat the sweet ripe berries. Scratched and stained purple with juice, we would carry our harvest home to make jam and pies with carefully hoarded sugar rations. Some we would take to school for the 'orange juice ladies' who had extra sugar rations to make jam for the troops. There was always the rumble of convoys along the Copthorne Road. One Saturday morning, Pam and I begged her mother for dressing up clothes and shoes to play Princesses. She thought we were in the garden, but hearing the rumble and clatter of the convoy grind to a halt, she walked to the front gate and looked over to the Green. There was one little blonde girl, Pam, and one little dark-haired girl, me, performing for the cheering and clapping troops. We, two five year olds, had stopped the British Army in its tracks! Not long after we came to Felbridge the school decided to offer a hot midday meal to the pupils. Many had a long walk to school and back and had to bring sandwiches. My mother had worked in a restaurant in the City in London and volunteered to set up and run the kitchen with the help of the two other evacuee mums. She was in her element and was soon making pots of Irish stew, tasty Lancashire hot pot and her speciality, rice pudding. By then, the realities of war were coming more often to Felbridge. There had been the terrible tragedy of the bombing of the East Grinstead cinema, with the loss of about two hundred innocent lives, many of them children. Stray bombs fell on Felbridge and we gleefully collected shrapnel to swap in the playground. The convoys continued to rumble through the village. At night, the searchlights would briefly illuminate our blackout darkened houses. Shopping trips to East Grinstead showed us first hand the terrible effects of battle in the horribly scarred and reconstructed faces of McIndoe's Guinea Pigs – the burned and disfigured soldiers and airmen from the special plastic surgery unit at Queen Victoria Hospital, run by Sir Archibald McIndoe. We had air raid drills at school, under the desks in the classroom and under the folding tables at lunchtime. Lunch was very civilized. Each table was named from a different plane. I was a Hurricane. We took turns to serve the person across from us. We were drilled to stop anything we were doing if the air raid warning sounded and to immediately get under cover. I remember one day I was at the head of the queue standing in front of my mother who was serving rice pudding. She ladled two generous portions on to my plates, then the siren went off. Being an obedient and literal child, I threw the two plates of pudding back to my mother and dived under the nearest table. There I got into a hassle with a small boy, who said ‘You can't come under our table, we're Spitfires and you're Hurricane!’ I yelled ‘It doesn't matter; we'll all be killed anyway!’ All that happened was a cow was killed by a stray stick of bombs and my mother was dripping with rice pudding! One of my strongest memories is of the cheerful stoicism of the mums. Rising to the challenge of making do and mending they could unravel worn jumpers, wash the wool, dye it and knit it up again. They stretched our meagre rations creatively, making plain but wholesome food supplemented by home-grown vegetables, hedgerow fruits and windfalls from local trees. We ate a lot of Spam, bullybeef, reconstituted eggs and dried milk. My mother made salad greens by blanching dandelions with an old brick. Rabbit was also a staple food, but we had to be careful not to crack our teeth on the lead shot. My mother would scrape the skins, stretch them on a wooden board and rub them with alum to cure them, and then she sewed them into fur-lined mittens to ward off the inevitable winter chilblains. The Roberts kept chickens and preserved their eggs in a bucket of isinglass kept in the downstairs loo. Mrs Roberts cooked up evil-smelling chicken mash from food scraps and peelings in an old pressure cooker. Nothing went to waste. I remember looking at a display of wax fruit in the windows of Letheby & Christophers in East Grinstead and being told that after the war we would have the real things (bananas, oranges and grapes) again – such luxuries, such dreams. As we did our daily walks through the woods and fields, led by my mother, we would all sing – old music hall songs, Show tunes from the 30's and ‘hits’ by Vera Lynn – White Cliffs of Dover was a favourite. Thus we kept up our spirits as we trudged along. And so our lives went on despite the uncertainties of air raids, the horror of damaged and burning planes, and talk of the terrible blitz on London. My father would drive down from London on his motorbike and sidecar about once a month. He and my mother would talk quietly about the bombing. Eventually our flat was bombed out and he had to rescue what furniture and belongings he could and move in with his brother in another part of London. He had joined the Home Guard and between that and his job of hauling tarmac to make runways on new air bases, he had little time to visit. He would walk into our room, peeling off his motorbike clothes and smelling of the cold, damp outside and his special brand of St Julian tobacco. It always felt like a small Christmas when we were a family again. Like most wartime couples, it was very hard for my parents to spend so much time apart. Despite my mother's growing love of the countryside, her job cooking for us all at school and her new friends she desperately wanted us all to be together again. Later in 1942 there was a lull in the bombing and my father decided to try to move us back to the London suburbs. I wanted to be back with my dad, but I also didn't really want to leave Felbridge. Like my mother, I had developed a deep appreciation of the woods and fields of Felbridge. I delighted in learning the names of the trees and wild flowers all around us, including the little white wild flowers that carpeted the woods in spring, they were dubbed "wooden enemies" by Pam! I knew where to find cowslips and the best banks for primroses and violets. I watched for the dog roses to unfurl in the summer and for the shiny red hips decorating the hedges in the autumn. Then something happened to precipitate our leaving Felbridge. Once a week, Mrs Morris would walk down Copthorne Road to visit with friends. As it was after dark when she started back for home, my mother would walk halfway to meet her. The last part of the path along Copthorne Road made Mrs Morris nervous because there were trees between it and the road, making a dark "tunnel". One Friday evening my mother tucked me into bed and set out to meet Mrs Morris. As she walked through the "tunnel" of trees she heard footsteps following her. She speeded up and so did they. She glanced quickly behind her but couldn't see anyone in the pitch dark. She hurried up again, her heels tapping on the path. Suddenly, someone grabbed her and hit her hard on the head. She screamed and stumbled forward, blood streaming into her eyes. At that point a car came along the road and lit up the path. My mother saw Mrs Morris and ran screaming towards her – her attacker ran off as the headlights beamed on to him. Mrs Morris got my mother home and called the police and a doctor. She had a nasty scalp wound that took several stitches to close it. Later the police found a broken bottle that had been used as a weapon. They decided that it was a case of mistaken identity, possibly a soldier from nearby Hobbs Barracks, who had had a falling out with a local girl. Then my father arrived and calm was restored. Eventually my father found us a house to rent in Chislehurst in Kent, far enough out of London to have woods, fields and ponds. We moved in January 1943, just in time for the VI rockets, the dreaded "doodlebugs". But the pull of Felbridge was still strong. During school holidays my mother and I would get up early and catch the three buses that took us back to Felbridge. As we got off at the Star on the London Road, I always felt that I was coming home. After the war, when I was at Grammar School I would ride my bike down to Felbridge and stay with Pam. Sometimes she would come and stay with us and sometimes I would go on holiday with the Roberts. Our parents continued to visit and sometimes took holidays together. We grew up, married and in 1968 I moved with my four children (and the cat) to the United States. We continued transatlantic visits. The Roberts were my other family. Over the years, and many moves later, Felbridge has become the place where I claim my roots. For a small child it was an idyllic island in a war torn country, where friendship overcame all the uncertainties and deprivations of the times. It also set the seeds of my future career as a biologist and teacher. The lessons learned during our after school walks through the woods and fields of Felbridge have been passed on to the many students I have encountered in forty three years as a teacher.
Felbridge will always be my home.   |
