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Part two of an edited oral history interview with Mr. Claude Banks at the Bedford Museum ‘Aniseed Balls and the Missing Cannon’ project Outreach Event at Riseley Village Hall organised in conjunction with Riseley WEA.

“I remember one night, I think it must have been about November 1941, it was a Thursday evening, I know it was a Thursday because my step-father had been to St.Neot’s market and he always used to bring some thing back for high tea. This particular time he had brought some smoked haddock and we were just sitting down to eat this smoked haddock about quarter to, to half past six in the evening and we could hear this German plane going round. You could always tell the sound of a German plane because I think they’d got a different number of cylinders to the English planes and they’d got a sort of a humming sound rather than a regular beat like the English planes had. He dropped this stick of six bombs at Keysoe Brook End which was about a mile, a mile and a half from us and there a sort of a pause of a split second as each bomb hit the ground and exploded. I think if there had been two more bombs in the stick, other than the six, I think my step-father would have been under the table because he got ready to get under the table. I know we had a mantle lamp hanging from the beam that gave us the light, a paraffin lamp, no electricity in those days and this lamp started to sway! That was not a very nice moment, that one!

Then I left school at Christmas 1941 and they put me to work, I don’t know why ever they wanted to, in an Auctioneers office at Thrapston. I think they’d probably made that plan for me because farming was going downhill fast before the war and they wanted to get me in some other business. Anyway, I was in this office at Thrapston, it was a bit like caging a wild sparrow in a trap rather than let it be doing what it liked outside, like I’d always been used to be doing. So I was at Thrapston then when the American Airmen started coming over from America to man the Bases and there was a Base at Grafton Underwood. I think it was in about June time the Grafton Underwood Base was serviceable for these B17s to go and bomb Germany. One night there was about three or four truckloads of these Airmen come to Thrapston to paint the town Red - the next day when the park keeper was going round tidying the park up he found a pair of ladies knickers and an American gas mask in close proximity! They were obviously surplus to requirements at the time!

I didn’t have a very happy time there and I was quite pleased when my step-dad said at Christmas 1943, ‘I was thinking you may as well come back on the farm.’ Well, I went back on the farm but as soon as I got to be 17 years old I thought, oh, bugger this I really ought to be doing something more the for war effort. So one Saturday afternoon I went to Bedford and went into the Enlisting Office and the old Army chap sitting behind his desk and I walked up to the desk and he said, ‘Good afternoon, young man, what can I do for you?’ I said. ‘Well, actually Sir I’ve come to volunteer for the Forces.’ He said, ‘That’s very noble of you.’ I said, ‘Well, I thought that’s the best thing I could do.’ He said, ‘Right. Let us take some particulars down.’ So he said, ‘Name?’ I said, ‘Claude Banks’, he said, ‘address?’ I said, ‘Manor Farm, Pertenhall.’ He said, ‘Oh’ and he put his pen down like that and he said, ‘Manor Farm? What work do you do?’ I said, ‘I drive a tractor on my step-father’s farm.’ He said, ‘I’ll give you a bit of good advice now’ he said, ‘you go home, get on that tractor and work as hard as you can. Because at the moment the German submarines are sinking the food ships faster than we can make new ships and the country at the moment has got three weeks food supply left.’ He said, ‘You will do the country more good working on your step-father’s farm that what you will driving a tank.’ He said, ‘As a matter of fact we’ve got a worse chance of being starved out than what we have being beaten by the German Army.’ So I was quite pleased, I didn’t particularly want to get killed but I wanted to do my bit so that left me with a clear conscience.

In about April 1943 there was one of their aeroplanes, it cut the top clean off an elm tree up the Swineshead Road and what I think they were doing, they were part of the force that was practicing to bomb the Dams in Germany for the Dam Buster Raids. If the plane had been about another yard or two yards lower it would have fetched the plane down. It had cut about 15 feet off the top of this tree. Cut it off just as if it was by a giant knife and the leaves and branches lay on the road.

Moving onto July 1943 it was getting on towards harvest time I suppose about the middle of July and this friend of mine and in the evening we were doing some pigeon shooting along the brook and we heard my step-father come out of the farmhouse shouting, ‘Claude, Claude’. My friend said, ‘Let us keep quite, he only wants us to put the sheep in’ because every body’s sheep used to get out because the grass is always greener on the other side, so stayed still. Anyway dad kept shouting and getting closer to us and I said, ‘Well, we’ve got to show ourselves because there’s something worse up than the sheep getting out for him to come all along here.’ So we came out this pigging hide and went towards him and he said, ‘Come on home and get your rifle, you’ve got to go’ he said, ‘there’s an Italian prisoner escaped at Tilbrook. ‘He’s shot half the people in Tilbrook and you’ve got to go and see if you can catch him.’ Action at last! Off we go up to the school and it turned out that Italian prisoner hadn’t shot half the people in Tilbrook! What he’d done, there was a gang of these Italian prisoners working on ditching and hedging in Tilbrook and they’d got a Guard there with a rifle. There was about 20 of these prisoners I think and quite a few Land Girls as well and this Guard had gone to relieve himself round and behind the hedge and this Italian prisoner had gone up to him with the trimming hook and cut his head off! Cut his head clean off with the trimming hook and pinched his rifle and ran off up the field. Some of these Land Girls ran up there saying and shouting, ‘Don’t be so silly, come on back’ and he shot at them, he didn’t hit them he missed them. This was about four o’clock in the afternoon and then of course when the news got around all the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Guards in all the surrounding villages were mobilised and we were put in pairs in a big block, Kimbolton, Tilbrook, Dean and Swineshead. The chap I was mated up with, our place was just near the entrance to Shelton’s Farm in the farm drive so we were put there about eight or nine o’clock at night. Everybody was told what to do, keep your eyes open, if there’s a vehicle comes down the road you’ve got to stop it in case he’s commandeered it. Anyway, I hadn’t been in the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Guard very long and it was so cold, although it was July it was really cold. By about midnight - and we had got a haystack in our field on the other side of the road so we went and got some of this hay and made a nest and went fast asleep! We were supposed to have been on guard! In the morning about five o’clock the Corporal came along and he said, ‘Right, chaps, get ready we are going to disband at six o’clock because the Army are going to come in and see if they can sort this bloke out.’ And I said, ‘Yes, about time too, we’ve been here and we haven’t had anything to eat or drink since yesterday tea time’ and he said, ‘did you stop every vehicle that came down during the night?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘You bloody well didn’t because if you had had done the NAAFI van came down at half past two and you’d have stopped it and you’d have had coffee and sandwiches!’ So I kept quiet after that! We were disbanded after that and that was the Saturday and I think we worked until whatever time we worked to and some of us went to Bedford on the bus because we used to in those days. When we got back we found out that this Prisoner had got in to Shelton’s house - that was inside the cordon. He’d got in — he was still in the woods, he got into the woods from Tilbrook, Shelton’s house is here which was inside the cordon. Everything happened inside the cordon. John Shelton, my schoolboy friend and his father and mother they were in the house, they were having their tea in the kitchen and his father said, ‘Well, it’s about time you went and fed the hens, John.’ John opened the kitchen door and there standing in the hallway was this Prisoner, with no shoes on, with a rifle, he pulled the trigger and the bullet whistled past John’s left shoulder and slammed into the door. John got his rifle. The Prisoner ran up the back stairs, John ran up the front stairs and he could see which bedroom he’d gone in. And then he went round the corner of the bedroom to see him and he pulled the trigger before the Italian could pull his trigger and the Prisoner fell down behind the bed. John’s father came up, he was a Sergeant in the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Guard, he’d got a Sten gun. They could see this ‘ere Prisoners feet wriggling about behind the corner of the bed and they thought he was probably trying to get a shot at them underneath the counterpane which was down on the floor. So he put a magazine in the Sten gun and sprayed it underneath, there was blood and guts all over the ceiling and everywhere. This was only a young Prisoner, only 19 or 20 and they reckon he’d gone funny in the head, he’d gone half mad and that’s why he did what he did and of course he lost his life. It was lucky for John because he was only two or three foot away from him at the most, he could have hit him anywhere but it just went over his shoulder.

We move on then and we were getting ready for ‘D’ Day. As ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Guard one of the duties of the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Guard in the villages surrounding was to guard to the railway tunnel at Souldrop. There’s a railway tunnel at Souldrop, about a mile long and I think the authorities thought that the Germans would probably try to block the railway line by blowing the tunnel up to stop us moving troops up and down the country ready for the invasion. Obviously there were two ends of the tunnel to guard which meant three pairs of guards for the night. It was summertime so the night duty was nine ‘til twelve, twelve ‘til three, three ‘til six and then a sort of Corporal or something like that to look after each end. Myself and a friend of mine we used to go on guard together and they’d told us — we went on the first guard nine ‘til twelve this particular instance - and they’d said, ‘About eleven to half past or before 12 o’clock a Policeman will walk up the line from the Sharnbrook way just to check up to see if you guys are awake. They said, ‘Make sure you are waiting for him.’ We were there and we could hear these footsteps coming on the gravel along the line from a long way and when he got about 50 or 60 yards from us I shouted. ‘Halt, who goes there?’ and these footsteps still kept coming on so I slammed a round up the spout of my rifle and that click in the stillness of the night he stopped then and he said, ‘I’m the Policeman, you should know I’m coming.’ I said, ‘You should have said who you was, you are lucky you haven’t been shot!’ He said, ‘Oh, it’s alright, you are awake, I’ll go on back.’

Towards the end of 1944 our war planners - to bring the war to an early conclusion they had this plan to drop the Airborne troops at Arnhem. And if it had of worked it would have probably shortened the war but the story of that is ‘It was a bridge too far’. They had to get over these various tributary’s of the Rhine and the other rivers and about 15 or 20 years ago I happened to be shooting, I was a guest at a shoot and there was another guest there and I got talking to him. He was a Dutchman and I thought it would be interesting to hear about his experience of the war. I said, ‘What did you get up to in the war?’ He said, ‘My father was in a business in Holland and England and he was trapped over this side when the Germans broke through in 1940.’ He said, ‘Me and my brother were with my mother in Holland and my father was over here. It was a very difficult time for my mother but I’d got an auntie who lived at Arnhem, my mother lived about 20 miles away. In 1944 - about the time of this planned drop of parachutes on Arnhem — my brother and myself were staying with my aunt in Arnhem. And the day before the Paratroopers were due to drop my auntie rang my mother up and said you’d better come and fetch these two boys because the English are coming tomorrow to drop the parachutes.’ They knew you see and so did the Germans and that is why that German Division was there waiting for them and shot them all to bits. I don’t know whether somebody who were supposed to have been over there on our side, you know the Resistance had let them down or whether somebody had been tortured and got the information, I don’t know. But this chap, and there is no reason why he shouldn’t have been telling the truth, because he said his aunt had rung up and said fetch your boys back the English parachutes are coming tomorrow. That’s why they were just there waiting for them.

The war ended in 1945 and we had a bit of luck, my mate, Ken Gentle and myself because we had started playing football for Kimbolton and each football club had a pair of Cup Final tickets. And every body’s name went into the hat and my mate and myself we won these two Cup Final tickets. However, somebody who was real fan of Charlton Athletic, who was going to be in the Cup Final, they were desperate to get these two tickets. So to barter for these two tickets they offered to put three of us up for two or three days up at the ‘VE’ Celebrations in London. So three of us had a buckshee place to stay for three days and we went up there with quite a bit of money, I don’t about quite a bit of money - a few bob! We had a hell of a time up there, I think I probably had the best time of my life. Because being country lads we didn’t know lot about what went on in the towns. We used to whizz about on the tube trains, to visit different people that we knew up there. We used to go to the Streatham Locarno which was a massive great dance hall, it held about 1000 people I should think for dances in the evening. Then there were all these parties up there, in Trafalgar Square - we were right in it! We were there! It was — you can’t describe it — everybody was so happy it had finished — the war to end all wars. But of course it wasn’t the war to end all wars because I mean they are still fighting now aren’t they, people being killed and all like that. But we did have a hell of a time! We did and we stopped up there until we ran out of money!�

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