About the contributor

My husband (Jack) was a child during the war and lived at Tidworth, Wiltshire. His Father (Pop) worked on a farm and was a hand-milker.
Upon joining the Homeguard, Pop was issued with a 303 Enfield rifle and a full uniform.
(We wonder if the fact that it was a Garrison town meant there was a plentiful supply of arms and uniforms).
Jack had an elder brother (Charlie) who was in the army and on one of his visits home he brought some ammunition for Pop's rifle.
One day, when their parents were out, Jack, his middle brother Cyril and Charlie, got up into a bedroom window and took turns firing the rifle.
In the corner of the garden was a lawn roller, which was made from a barrel, full of stones. The roller made a good target and a direct hit sent the stones showering out of the roller at high speed. They hit a row of runner beans and cut them off as clean as a whistle. Pop never did find out how his beans were felled.

Jack remembers pushing live rounds into gate posts etc, and hitting them with a hammer, 'to see what would happen'! It's a wonder he survived childhood.

He remembers the Americans coming to Tidworth. He was playing 'phoo-sticks' one day and dashed across the road and was hit by a US Army Staff Car. The Officer got out and picked him up. He was taken home in the Staff car and the Officer called around a few days later to see if he was okay.

Before D-Day he remembers the fields around Tidworth full of vehicles, real and mock-ups made from wood and canvas.

The Garrison Theatre held shows for the troups and he once saw Bob Hope there. He also went to Christmas parties, arranged by the Americans, for the local children. There was food there that they had only ever imagined and treats that were beyond their wildest dreams. Sweets, chocolate, sugar knobs, comics and fruit, things he had never seen.

He recalls a day when he went running into his Mother and announced that there were 'sausages' falling from a plane. A German plane was bombing the camp. The bombs fell along side the railway but missed the rails. That was the only time Tidworth was bombed.

By the end of the war he had gathered together almost a full set of American kit. Roaming around the fields and hills, he would find things discarded, such as webbing, gaters, bayonets, shovels, helmets and badges etc.

At the end of the war he remembers sitting on the pavement, watching the German prisoners of war, marching through the village to and from their days work. They worked in Tidworth camp and lived at a P.O.W camp at Kangaroo Corner, between Tidworth and Ludgershall.