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Portrait of
a Parish - Page 26
Reminiscences of Terry Love - 1940's/1950's
The Ministry of Agriculture was happy to supply a POW labour
force. At first I kept my distance thinking they might have two
heads or something, but by degrees I came to accept them and in
the end I spent most of my time with them. They were, in the
main, hard workers and during haymaking time would labour from
dawn to dusk cutting the steeper land with scythes. Authority
was lax, and most seemed content with the work and to be out of
the war. Although their language did seem strange I soon got
used to hearing it and even managed, to my granny's horror, to
pick up a few words of German. Two stayed on after the war and
soon became part of the village life, and I am happy to say I
remained friends with them for the rest of their lives. As D-Day
approached the transit camps in the surrounding counties became
packed with Allied troops who seemed to spill into every country
lane - the locals had their first contact with the might of the
U.S. Army. Sometimes my mother would take me to the end of
Waterhouse Lane where we would sit on a huge stone block and
watch the columns of armour heading for the coast. The main
reason for my wanting to go there was the generous handouts of
candy, Hershey bars and gum, a kid only had to wave to a passing
jeep to be showered with the stuff. I often wonder how many of
those happy-go-lucky men made it out of the bloodbath of Omaha
Beach.
During this time some of my family were still living in Bath
and sometimes, for official purposes, we needed to return to the
city. This entailed walking in and, because of the blackout, we
would catch a train to Limpley Stoke and walk back to
Waterhouse. It is difficult now to think of a total blackout.
Walking in the streets of Bath was bad enough. Remember the city
had been bombed, some road were still pocked with roughly filled
craters, pavements piled with rubble and telephone wires lying
everywhere to tip the unwary, but when you got to the station
the platforms were packed solid with troops, the military had
priority, and sometimes you waited for hours for a Portsmouth
train, while drunken sailors fought with bottles in the
darkness.
Terry Love:
page 25 - page 26 -
page 27 -
page 28
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