Robert Blackmore grew up in Westbury in the 1930s and his parents owned and ran a shop in Maristow Street. Here we conclude his memories of his early life in the town. Read part one here.
I was getting older and realising the true dangers of war. I had moved up to Westbury Senior School (now Matravers School) and was also in the boy scouts. Despite the war we went camping each year.
Everyone in Westbury was now involved in the war effort. The cloth factories were making khaki, air force blue and navy cloth for armed forces uniforms. Garden railings were cut down to be melted and used to make munitions. Women were employed in factories, on buses and other services to fill the places of men who were serving in the armed forces. Many women also served in the Army (ATS), Navy (WRENS) and the Airforce. (WAAFS). Also a prisoner of war camp was constructed on The Ham for captured Italian soldiers. The guards were from the Pioneer Corps which was a non-combatant unit of the British Army.
There was an occasion when a German aircraft was shot down and crashed on the hills not far from the White Horse. A local story was the pilot had bailed out and walked into town to give himself up. It was a good war story.
As a young boy with a bike I was able to become a messenger for the Air Raid Precautions. They were people who wore tin helmets and were equipped with stirrup pumps and buckets of water to extinguish incendiary bombs. No incendiary bombs were ever dropped in Westbury to my knowledge, but we were prepared if they had.
In one exercise to test the effectiveness of the ARP I had to cycle to the ARP persons in the Market Square and tell them they were wanted at the post office unit as reinforcements. “Do we take our water?” I was asked. I didn’t know. I think they left their bucket of water and just took their stirrup pump. It would have slowed them up trying to carry a bucket of water with them. Looking back I think it was fortunate no incendiary bombs were dropped in Westbury.
Then in 1942 the Yanks came to town. It was supposed to be a military secret but with so many local persons working on the railway, the time and day the Yanks were coming was a matter on the local grapevine.
As boys we went down to the railway station to see them come in. We expected them to come marching out of the station in step and with arms swinging. But suddenly they sauntered out in a straggly bunch with rifles slung over their shoulders, chatting and cursing to one another. They were dressed in their casual style uniforms and wearing their inner helmets. The only Americans we had seen before were in Cowboy and Indian movies at the kids’ matinee cinema and here were Americans for real. We asked them where they were from and other questions about America. As they wandered into town to take up their billets all I remember them asking us was “what the hell do you do for fun in this godforsaken town”
They were an engineering unit and given the task of building an ordnance depot on The Ham. Their headquarters was in the requisitioned house Fontainville in Edward Street.
The G.I. occupation of Westbury gave a whole new character to the town. The Americans were largely outgoing and naturally friendly persons. Not like the reserved British. They joined in whatever was going on and dated local girls on first sight in the street.
As a young boy I and my pals soon got into the swing of things. We got used to American slang and swear words and chewing gum.
I remember their army pay was about as much as an average English person earned, and yet their keep was paid for by the US government. (Hence the meaning of G.I. = Government Issue.). They didn’t understand the value of our money. They would walk into the local cake shop and say “give me a pound’s worth of donuts” (the baker probably didn’t have a pound’s worth of donuts in the entire shop). This difference in exchange rates and their service pay was why people used the phrase: “The Yanks are over here and over paid.”
During this period I left Westbury Senior School at the age of fourteen (the school leaving age) and went to college in Bath. I travelled on the train every day. At college we were doing North American history and as my parents used to invite American soldiers to tea every Sunday, I was able to increase my knowledge of the subject of North American history from them. I became very interested in America and decided I would go to America whenever I could. (In fact it became a retirement project for me and since retiring I have made several trips to the United States and visited most of their great cities.) On one trip I was buying picture postcards of the locality when a customer picking up on my English accent approached me and told me he was stationed in England during the war and wanted to know what it was like in England now. I was able to relate the differences from the time he was stationed in England to the present day. (After all while he was serving in the UK I was experiencing the war years as part of my childhood) “I guess everywhere has changed,’ he said.
I’ve digressed here to explain the effect the war-time Americans had on me. But others were even more influenced by the Americans. There were G.I. war brides who married American soldiers and after the war went to live in the United States. A cousin of mine was a G.I. bride and an uncle of mine emigrated to America after the war.
Another significant wartime memory of mine was as D-Day approached seeing a convoy of US army trucks parked down Haynes Road and throughout the town waiting to move on to Southampton for the invasion.
While they waited, the soldiers brewed coffee on camping stoves and played their dice game “craps”.
We knew when D-Day had begun. That night there was a constant drone of aircraft flying overhead, it was our aircraft and some were towing gliders.
When Victory in Europe was declared the whole population of Westbury and anyone else who was in the town flocked to the Market Square to celebrate.
There was singing and dancing and cheering and long Congo lines and lots of guys and girls kissing.
I think the celebrations went on to the early hours. It was great the war in Europe was over, but the war still continued in the Far East against the Japanese.
Recently the Japanese city of Nagasaki has been in the news as being the first nuclear bomb used in WWII but also Hiroshima was nuked and the colossal destroying power of these bombs wiping out cities in one devastating blow brought Japan to the surrender table and ended the war in the Far East.
After the war was over I left Westbury and went out into the wider world. Then recently by chance I have returned to live in Westbury. I am in my eighties and although my memory isn’t what it was, I will always remember my years of growing up in Westbury before the war and when sleepy old Westbury was a quiet peaceful town where nothing ever happened.
