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I was born close to Mendlesham airfield where the RAF bombers took off all of the time. My father was a cowman which was a reserved occupation. On our farm at the time were had a lot of Italian POW’s, two of them got to know about my older brother and I. They carved a horse for me and an elephant for my brother, then put them on wheels ( they were about 15 inches high ) they also painted my horse brown, and the elephant blue, with a piece of string in the front to pull them around. I never forget the looks in their faces as they watched us playing with our new toys; they had come up to the house and were sitting on the settee.

There was a big pond between us and the next house door; from time to time I used to go missing, my mum used to get worried and go round to see the next door neighbour, to ask Mrs. Simmonds if she had seen me. Mrs. Simmonds would grin and open the door wide, to show me sitting on the floor spooning sugar out of the jam jar in the sideboard( sugar was rationed and difficult to get hold of ). Mum was horrified and told me to stop, but Mrs. Simmonds said no it’s alright he’s quite happy (I was three years old).

In the corner was a grandfather and I remember sitting and watching the pendulum, and rocking from side to side with it.

We had no water in the house so dad used to have a little trailer on his bike and came home with a half size churn of water every day for washing and drinking ect. He also used to brink home milk in cans on the handlebars, some went through the cooker to be sterilized but we also had it straight from the cows. We also kept chickens and a vegetable patch in the garden, so we must have been well fed. We had an earth closet (toilet) down the bottom of the garden, dad used to go down once a week with a spade. We also had a dog who protected me from any strangers.

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