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Not long after this episode there were other men in POW. (Prisoners of War) uniforms, but these had big white spots on their backs. These men spoke a completely different language (German). It was harvest time and everybody was gathering in the wheat and bailed stalks. The ones wearing the white spots were doing most of the work, like Mr Agate and Freddie the cowman, but the other ones in the same uniform as Mr Agate has in doors, were carrying rifles. Now as a small boy I am already confused, but I got even more confused when one of the solders carrying a rifle asked one of the men with the white spots to hold his rifle, while he popped round the back of a hay stack or something?
Now these men with the white spots who spoke a different language became quite friendly with us; one day mum was ill so they asked Mr Agate if they could help by looking after my brother and me. They made their meals and ours in a circle of bailed straw and logs, set some planks up to sit on and had a fire in the middle. The smell of the coffee and the soup, on an open, smoky fire, drinking out of sooty steel mugs… mmm. They were genuinely very, very good. They tried to teach me their way of talking. Some words still remain with me even now, for No was Nein, and Yes was Ja, Mother was Mutter, Guten Tag was Good Day. They sang many songs, and tried to teach them to us. The way they sang them was really good. One was called 'Eidelweiss' and another 'Silent Night', and 'Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles' in their own language. I had got friendly with the enemy all but one that is. He had fair hair and a beard he was not very friendly at all and I did not like him and I was under the impression he was not really liked by the others. Most of them used to come into the house at times, and when mum was better she used to have some in for meals when Mr Agate was there. At first there were only a few, but gradually there was a great many of them.
My brother got caught in the belt of a generator one day and he was rescued by one of the prisoners. One time they paraded for some reason, I think it might have been my birthday and they did not wear their uniforms with the white spots but their proper uniforms. They paraded in front of the garages opposite our house and they were very smart. They were in different types of uniforms, some a greenish colour, some in a grey colour and a few in black. Their caps were very impressive, as well as their badges, the spread out birds on their left top breast were magnificent. There were one or two that had smaller birds with clipped wings on their left top arms I remember. At the end they went for their usual tea-break in a circle and I remember putting some of their caps and boots on which were far too big for me. Yes, these solders have always stayed in my mind. There was a documentary on TV a short while ago and a Welsh man, who was a boy at the time, also remembered them the same as I did.

Some days, I think it was Sundays, some of these men used to take Mr Agate, mum, my brother and me up near where their camp was, it was on a sloping field with a stream running down and across it. Throughout the whole field and along the stream there were wooden figures, all with saws and axes, birds with wings fluttering, dogs jumping up and down, ladies hanging wooden washing on a line, all made of wood, and worked by the flow of the steam. All these models that these men had made were really lovely and a marvel to look at. Wherever these men went there was always a soldier with a rifle! I went back many years later to see if the wooden figures were still there, but apparently they are in a museum somewhere.
Another thing that comes to mind as I write this was when we went out we would sometimes go looking for parachutes, mum used to make dresses for herself and shirts for us out of them. Also we came across lots of foil strips similar to that we put on Christmas trees, only these were a lot heavier, possibly made out of lead. They were from a system for deceiving the German aircraft radar signals called 'Window'. I asked Mr Agate who the enemy was and he laughed and said I would learn one day. Once we came across a parachute and a balloon all tied up together with a funny looking thing on it, somebody came and took it away - it was a weather balloon.
By this time I have started school and the school is at Lurgashall, and it is now coming up to Christmas 1945. The Americans have organized a Christmas party for all the local children. I think the lorry that came to the house to take us went into a ditch and turned over but the fall was stopped by some trees and they had to get another lorry to finish the journey. When we got there all the buildings were big, black half-round metal, curved buildings; my first encounter with a Nissen huts. I still have a fascination about them even now and remember seeing them being built. There was a lovely party there and they put on a Walt Disney film about pirates, it was a good film until somebody chopped off somebody’s head, well I screamed and screamed. (and I have never seen the film since but I would like to know how it finished). I had a lovely ride back home afterwards, I was in the front, and I love the Yanks as well.
After that it must have been at the end of the war in Europe and there was two big parties held, one at Lodgsworth and the other at Fernhurst. We were taken there by the Americans again in lorries, strange but I am sure that there was some other unformed soldiers there in their good uniforms, they were in small groups. I remember seeing more film shows in Nissen huts.
So yes, most of my time was spent with solders friend and foe, the German POWs stayed in my mind because of how very smart they looked.
Mum took my brother and me quite often now to see her aunty Emily at East Grinstead. While travelling on the trains I would look for all the sidings on the railways, they were packed with aircraft of all kinds , there was one up near Horsham and another somewhere near Three Bridges.

During these visits we would come across many men in uniforms with some great disfigurement owing to combat, there was one that I began to speak to on the railway station.
Whilst at East Grinstead, going down a woody track towards the race course there was a very large hole, I kept scraping away at this every time I went there and I eventually come across a few bits of a flying bomb.
During 1946 Mr Agate and I think Freddy the cowman were asked to leave. I believe it had something to do with Mr Dobson who was now in a position to employ very cheap labour. Anyway, Mr Agate now found employment at a Doctor's house at East Horsley, not far from Guilford. Whilst there Mr Agate married my mum and so we all became Agates by order of a piece of paper. Whilst there for a short time I got to play with some new friends, they spoke differently, almost like those solders with the white spots on their backs. During our playing in the school opposite the house where we were living. the children would go berserk whenever they saw a policeman. It took some time to convince them that these men in black uniform were not the Gestapo? I asked a policeman 'Who is the Gestapo?' and when he told me I asked if he could to talk to them and convince them that the village policeman was not the Gestapo. Everybody got on slowly and, in fact, they were the only ones who would talk to me at school.
About a year later, we moved to a very lonely spot, a place between Alfold and Chiddingfold, a couple of miles south of Dunsfold. It was on a no-through road. Some times, as small boys do, we went for a walk along the old disused canal and we came across an aerodrome. On one corner was a blister hangar with three or four single-engined aeroplanes just sitting there and in the distance we could see some taking off. We asked if we could look inside one and was told it was quite OK as they were being sold as scrap and if we had £50 we could have one - just think I could have had a spitfire for £50 -
if only my dad had had £50!
Quite often the road by our house would be sealed off and only those living there were allowed to enter. Every so often during these periods there was a man who visited his old mother. who we also used to visit. He'd let us come and visit him and he gave my parents things for helping her with the garden. Why all the fuss with police and army road checks? - it turned out to be Field Marshal Lord Montgomery who came to see his mother.
During the stay here we made camps and hide-outs in the woods. One day we went into one of our camps and found or thought, somebody had been there; it could not have been anyone else as we were the only ones there. We took food out, and it all went, so did some cloths. We told my dad, who came out and had a look and he got his employer to phone the police. It turned out we had come across the man, or one of them, that had killed a policeman in London. They got him, and I think he was hanged.
Well, years have gone by and I eventually met Adolf Galland, the German fighter pilot and shook his hand. During this passage of time I also gathered in quite a collection of WWII crashed aircraft pieces.

In 1964, when my mum was dying in hospital, the RAF rushed me home from Singapore. She told me that my natural dad had died during the war as a fighter pilot not long after the battle of Britain hence my enthusiasm for aeroplanes. Up till now I have not been able to trace his history but I wish I could.
I have never learnt to speak German, but I had one of the best German uniform collections in the Ross-shire area until it was stolen, the police said I could not prove it was mine - true, I had only been collecting it since the age of ten!
And that is the end of my story.
Until this day, January 2006, I still have not been able to trace my real father who was killed at the beginning of the war a Polish/Jew RAF fighter pilot.

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