蜜芽传媒

My name is John Goulding
I am now 69
This is my world war 2 story.
My earliest recollections of World War 2 was while I was four years old and living at Lower Bullington near Winchester. The soldiers of the expeditionary force were working to the coast, I believe this was a Sunday the first day of the war. My mother and her neighbours made jugs of tea and supplied the soldiers as they made their way to Southampton and embarkation to France. I remember looking from the window of my home and seeing trains transporting tanks and guns to the coast. This line was somewhere near where the M3 is now. We moved into Andover into Mylen road and my father helped my neighbour Mr.Leole build an air raid shelter at the bottom of his garden, which we did occupy if the air raid Seiren sounded. It did at night when I was five my mother was pushing my brother in his pushchair and an aunt with her son and I walking at the top end of Weyhill Road towards the Andover aerodrome. When, the Seiren which was situated on the top of Mc Dougolls, sounded. I was sat on the pushchair and my cousin was carried under my Aunts arm and they ran down to the end of The Drove Road. By the side of the co-op stores, now Scats stood an air raid warden, when we said where we lived, directed us to his own home, the first house on the left in The Drove Road , from here we briefly watched an Ariel dog fight over Andover aerodrome, now DLO Andover from the back window before our host decided it was unsafe we sat at the bottom of the stairs. In the evening we went to see a bomb crater by the side of the road, near the ambulance station and opposite the entrance to the Harrow Way. I remember the digger boys clambering down into the crater to find pieces of shrapnel. My aunts windows in Tollgate Road got broke by the blast. At Charlton junior school where the cycle shop is now we had two air raid shelters in the head mistresses garden and I remember the school ushered into them and we sang Isacc waltz hymn 鈥渙 god our help in ages passed our hope in years to come鈥� until the sirens sounded 鈥渁ll clear鈥� . One night my mother took me to look out of the bedroom window and told me the red glow in the sky was Southampton burning. We visited Southampton to see the destruction. Banage balloons were still above the city just below the bargate it was all ruins and most properties above had been bombed. Andover鈥檚 grammar school had the evacuees from Southampton to teach for half of the day and the local children the other half. Our front rooms and front bedrooms had to be let to accommodate families escaping the blitz. My father and uncle with many Andoverians were the new home guards. My uncle was awarded the MBE for bravery when he and an officer where transporting a live bomb to be disposed of and it exploded. The officer was gravely injured and my uncle though badly injured crawled one and quarter miles to summand help. The worse calamity for Andover was the crashing of an American flying fortress bomber badly equipped trying to make the air field it passed so far over the caf茅 in Weyhill Road which is now the stores it took the chimney from the roof and passed over a field which is now Portway close and crashed into the houses of Ashfield road. The crew was killed but no civilians. I remember going to Weyhill road and witnessing the devastation. The American soldiers were stationed near and their convoys of army trucks would drive through. Youngsters would emerge in anticipation to catch candy and chewing gum thrown from the vehicles. Many 鈥榊anks鈥� as they were called would be approached by children with the words 鈥� Got any gum chum?鈥� and they were seldom disappointed. They were generous and we had little, all sweets along with most things were rationed with coupons, which were needed without money for purchases. They also gave Christmas parties for the local children. On the build up to D-day June 6th 1944 the local woodlands held military vehicles camouflaged and hidden in readiness. Harwood forest still has the concrete roads, which were laid for the transport. A Nissan hut, which was sleeping quarters. Opposite the hospital is an air raid shelter now bricked up where our gas masks were checked out . My brother four years younger had a Mickey mouse looking one. There was an Italian prisoner of war camp on Charlton down where they worked on the farms and on Sunday afternoons they walked out through Charlton. Little greys with coloured circular and triangular patches on their clothing for identification. There were no toys during the war years our parents and grandparents usually tried to make things.

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