蜜芽传媒

MY WORLD WAR 2 REPORT. - from Cornwall鈥檚 North Coast.

HAVING been born in a Cornish cottage on 25 April 1940, my direct experience of the war has to be understood through the eyes of a child, a boy child. The b/w photograph was taken by my mother, Nina Francis P (nee Luker) with her little Brownie Box camera that I later inherited. It shows me on the sand of Porth Beach, just north of Newquay, near the sea-wall in 1941. I guess I look quite healthy despite the war, and the fact that the cottage (Greenbank Cottage next to the Greenbank Hotel where Royal Canadian Airforce pilots were billitted) had no electricity inside nor running water - a tap outside was the only water supply.
Above me in the photo can be seen against the sky, spirals of barbed wire. This was supposed to be a defence against any invading Nazi force, for Porth was a beach that had roads running down to the shore unlike the steep cliffs at Newquay town itself. I remember the barbed wire in great 2 meter diameter spirals all around the cliffs that into the late 1940s and early 1950s was never removed, but just was allowed to rust away, along with the more solid stakes of iron that held them in position that looked like monster cork screws. Of course we kids used to play with this material on our doorsteps almost, and fashion the rusty barbed wire into 10 cm. throwing 鈥渒nives鈥� as we followed our cowboy heroes on film that shot guns and threw knives! Luckily noone in my gang lost an eye with such activity, but a few recieved nasty bloody scratches as the metal flew around. Toys were in short supply during and after the war but our relatives handed on old books, and father tried his hand at making a few from wood.
My father told me that because he was 35 years old when war was declared and that he had a young family, and also because he was an apprenticed carpenter, he was designated to work at the dockyards in Plymouth to repair and refurbish Royal Navy ships when they returned there after their action at sea. He was quite happy with this, especially as he received extra gallons of petrol for his motorcycle so he could drive to and from his work some 50-odd miles away.
Despite my young age, after the war with the advent of rationing, I was taken by father to attend to fishing lines on the next beach to Porth, Whipsiderry, so our diet could consist of fresh fish. I remember taking out the line among the surf at low tide to set the 50 baited hooks, trying to prevent the waves knocking me over and prevent myself getting hooked on the barbs (noone had taught me to swim at this stage), and waiting as the tide flowed in as we let out the line and heaved it up the beach until we came to the final drag of getting all on shore with the line over my shoulder and seeing what the catch was. Bass, ray, turbot were the usual catch that we packed in bags and heaved home up the steep steps at Whipsiderry. This was shared among the whole village to supplement everyone鈥檚 rationed diet. Sometimes we 鈥減ut down lines鈥� along the beach at low tide. These consisted of about a yard of strong line with hook and bait at one end, and a piece of slate with a hole in the centre at the other end. The line went through the hole and was tied to a slice of wood, and the whole was buried about a foot down in the sand. We had to wait while the sea came in and covered them or else the seagulls would have appeared to eat the bait and get themselves caught. At the next low tide we had to arrive before the lines were uncovered, perhaps at 5.30 on a November morning to prevent the seagulls eating our catch.
Not only the fruit of the seas did we heave home from the sandy shores, but also timber, drums of oil and petrol, rope - so many gifts washed up - from ships in the Atlantic that had been sunk or attacked and lost cargo.
About 1947 a further bonus was presented to me and the "gang" that had formed in the village as a result of World War 2. To the north of the beach, up the wild valley where the river runs down from the moors inland, a number of military vehicles, mostly armoured personel carriers, had been dumped among the marshy reeds. These made ideal places for us to establish "camps". The only problem we had in getting to them was "Curlie Harris" who lived in a caravan behind the large coach garage that stood just off the road at the entrance to the valley (which has now been "civilised" and the marshes drained as part of Porth Beach Tourist Park). We generally had no problem getting past this sentry, and even if seen each of us could run faster than Mr. Harris! Once among the reeds we were invisible and we laid out stamped down reed lanes, some with trip wires across them, that led to the military vehicles where we brought dry wood and got a fire going, hoping the smoke would not be seen. Some of the older members of the gang brought cigarettes and found a peaceful place to smoke them hidden among the reeds in the swamp. Once I remember forgetting my coat in the camp as we wandered off homewards, but as I went back to retrieve it Curlie Harris appeared and I ran. I had to find my way along the path on the other side of the river in the evening dusk, then take off my clothes to cross it at a shallow point, rush into the reeds to get my coat and recross the river holding it above my head, the dress myself at the side of the river before strolling off home looking innocent.
As the war ended I began to attend primary school and our male teachers were mainly ex-servicemen who had survived the horrors. They demanded military-style discipline from us tiny humans, and a few were violent with us when they did not get it. But I mostly avoided trouble and my artistic talents were set to make a series of paintings and maps based on my local village to be displayed in the Festival of Britain in London, a faraway place to us.
Six years after the war ended I found that I had passed the 11+ examination and had won a place at the local grammar school. This angered my father, the main reason being that he himself had not been able to go to grammar school. But luckily for me there was no procedure for a child who had passed his 11+ NOT to go to grammar school, so I went to Newquay Grammar School (for boys) in Edgecumbe Avenue where new entrants were taught in a wooden ex-World War I hut heated by Tortoise coke stoves. After a slow start I worked my way to near the top of the class and was due to take 8 GCE 鈥淥鈥� level subjects in June 1956. But on my sixteenth birthday my father took a day off work and entered my school demanding of the headmaster that I leave school and start earning a living immediately. Father had not warned me about what he did, nor discussed any possible job I might do. Eventually father gave in and I stayed on at school and won the top prizes for both GCE 鈥淥鈥� and 鈥淎鈥� level results in our school. I later qualified as a teacher and obtained an honours degree in physics from Exeter University.
One post took me to Japan in 1972 where I fell for a young 26 year-old Japanese girl whom I brought back to England in 1980, married and we had a son. My Uncle George who had married my mother鈥檚 sister refused to meet us because of his experiences during the war in Burma as part of Colonel Windgate鈥檚 team in the jungle. He had been brainwashed to so hate the Japanese generally in the 1940s that he was afraid my wife, born 1954, and son, born 1980, would set off bad memories of his wartime experiences. As it was, I gather George saw no action against the Japanese army and was soon shipped back to Blighty due to some tropical disease. Ah, the wonderful legacy of World War II.

Neil Pedlar 26 October 2005

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