Suffolk

B-17 Tail Gunner

Served as a tail gunner in B-17. Phil has been contacted to add more to his B17 story....

Dealing with the Fast Talkers

She'd have a list of people who had volunteered to take evacuees, but there was also some billeting:...

A Crashed Thunderbolt

I used to cycle up to Raydon airfield and remember seeing a ‘Thunderbolt’ fighter crash at...

Northgate School in Wartime.

Northgate School in Wartime. I was at Northgate School, Ipswich, during the war....

My Earliest Memory

My very first memory around the age of eighteen months is of my parents panicking to get me out of the...

Ex London Evacuee.

I was evacueated from Meadow road Lambeth in London to Nacton with my parents to live with my...

Making Bomb Parts: In Ipswich

My husband was in the RAf, and he flew over to France on D-Day, landing at Aramanche....

The Food Officer

My father was the Food Officer for Hadleigh and his Food Office was located in Hadleigh High Street during...

Memories of Evacuation

We attended school, held in a village hall, with the other London evacuees. After returning home I was...

Hello Tom

Tom was in the Suffolk Regiment and spent most of his war in a Japanese prisoner of war camp... My son,...

Too Big to Fit Under the Bed

Tanks were kept outside my mum's house in Shakespeare Road and I remember balloons up in the sky. My...

Liberators from Debach

The first mission for the Liberators at the new air base at Debach near Ipswich was on D-Day. Thirty six...

The Price of a Lost House

I lived in Donnington Road in Ipswich and we got a direct hit. Our neighbours were killed in the raid but I...

Catching Rabbits

Emma comes from a Gypsy Traveller family and has been living on the West Meadows Traveller site in Ipswich...

The Hadleigh Horse Market

Although we had had evacuees during the phoney war, they had all drifted home again... I remember that they...

Reserve Occupation: A Docker in Ipswich

He was a docker in the local docks but some of the time he was a steel erector, Ipswich was very lucky...

Throw Away Rabbit Hutches

There were a number of air bases near us, and they used to take all their rubbish by lorry to a large...

Making Do

At first during the raids we slept on a mattress under the dinigng room table but then had an air raid...

Pubs and Pills

From my bedroom window I had a grandstand view and remember a group of very happy airmen staggering up the...

The Thrill of Shopping

I well remember going to the town 10 miles away with my mother joining all the queues. The thrill when we...

School days

As the ladies were playing, we heard the sound of a doodlebug approaching... We heard the engine stop and...

Cycling in the Blackout

When I was old enough, I was allowed to the Ack Ack Battery on Nacton Road to take part in the dances...

Suplementing the Rations

We grew plenty of vegetables, like swede and potatoes, and we caught pigeons and pheasants all the time. We...

Wartime Harvest

It was the social life of the town, harvest time. Now it's done anonymously by a combine harvester and...

Butterfly Bombs In Ipswich

My father remembered the Butterfly bombs that fell over Ransomes and Rapiers. These canisters had tops that...

Fundraising in a Coffin

We bought a Spitfire named ‘Hadleigh’ but unfortunately it only flew a few sorties before it...