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STRATFORD ORAL HISTORY WW2 - EDITED TRANSCRIPTS
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1 — Edward (Tommy) Booker, born 1902 and his wife, Lilian, born 1909, talk about the Government Treasury Dept. at Stratford, and the London staff being billeted here:

“I was only a shorthand writer there, but they sent me down here; I suppose I must have been up the top of the scale and they put me in charge of 25 girls, half shorthand writers, half copying typists — we had the dining room of the White Swan as our office. The girls came from London and round about, by the trainload, (to Stratford) because they thought it was a safe spot you see, Hitler said he’d never bomb Stratford because he considered that Shakespeare was part of Germany…
(but) I remember one night when Tommy and I were walking round Shottery Fields, it was a lovely night, beautiful moon and I heard this plane. I said ‘Tommy, there’s a plane, it’s very low.’ And he said ‘Oh, that’s all right, it’s one of ours, I know the sound of it.’ Right underneath the moon, we saw the great big Swastika. The German was limping back I suppose he was in trouble.

The Treasury went to the Welcombe Hotel, (and) the Americans took over the White Swan. I’ll tell you a little story, but I don’t know that it ought to go on record. The day we arrived here, we didn’t get to Leamington till after three o’clock, and so of course there was no lunch for us, so we came on to Stratford, and we had to walk from the railway to the White Swan, and as we passed Arden Street, past the hospital, there was a little group of people on the corner of Grove Road, and one of them said ‘Here come the bloody interlopers.’ That was our welcome to Stratford!
They had to put us all up you see, they had to take us all into their houses, and they didn’t get an awful lot for it, and as a matter of fact, most of us had to supplement them. I was in Albany Road — I had a very nice place.

They welcomed the Americans, didn’t they, because the Americans came with all boxes of sweets and things like that that they wanted I presume. We had quite a few down at the White Swan, didn’t we — nice chaps.
We formed a social club (in the White Swan dining room) so that our people could have somewhere to go, because obviously where we were billeted they didn’t always want you stuck in there every evening you see. The bar next door brought us and the locals together.

One or two of our people were billeted at the HayTor Hotel, some of the solicitors you know, the big bugs. They had installed something like fourteen telephone lines in case the Cabinet may want to come down, if London got too hot…they had a lot done at the (Memorial) Theatre as well, a lot of telephone lines down there (for the Parliament). I don’t think Churchill would have come anyway, he had got himself a safe place underneath the Admiralty hadn’t he, and he spent all his time there.

I don’t think {the local people) were interested, except that they were annoyed about the invasion, but then they got over that and we all sort of mucked in together, I never had any trouble. I mean the people I was with, they were very good, used to go away and leave me in charge of the place, hadn’t they? We mixed with the locals all right, and that remark (about interlopers) was very ill-timed and quite unnecessary, it was by a local big-mouth — he was an isolated case he was — I knew the chap — dead now! I’ll never forget it, I can see the man. We felt so bedraggled, we hadn’t had anything from the time we had our breakfast you see, till the time we got to the White Swan when we were given a cup of tea and a fairy cake, that was all we had had all day.

There wasn’t much trouble about. Some of the airmen used to get a bit obstreperous and used to have fights in Bridge Street — letting off steam more than anything.
The local girls were well pleased with all this activity, especially when the Americans came with the nylons and this that and the other. I don’t know of any instances of marriage but they enjoyed themselves; I don’t remember any children left behind, (but) all sorts of affairs were going on — it’s wartime, what do you expect? One thing that tickled us was an American came down the street one evening, knocked on the door and one of the youngsters opened the door to him: ‘Do you mind if I have my watch, I forgot to collect it last night?’ So the boy said ‘Where was it?’ ‘Up in the bedroom.’ And of course they had such loud voices that everybody in Kendall Avenue heard it.
He got his watch; that was part and parcel of the war, I mean the husbands being away at the war and of course the Americans here.
We had bombers didn’t we, bombers over at Wellesbourne, and some nights they’d skim over the top of the houses they were so low. The night before we were married, I was up most of the night because you couldn’t sleep with these planes soaring — just clearing the rooftops, going out.�

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