Bury St Edmunds historian Martyn Taylor shares Suffolk’s World War Two memories for VE Day 80th anniversary
Today we are celebrating Victory in Europe Day when the allies of World War Two formally accepted the unconditional surrender of Germany’s armed forces on Tuesday, May 8, 1945.
This momentous occasion will be recognised throughout the country — as it will be in Bury St Edmunds — with various events.
In 2015, I interviewed a number of people of a certain age concerning WW2 for my book, Bury St Edmunds Memories, many of whom have since sadly passed away.
The following are some of their memories, in some cases edited by me for context.
Rationing — Gwen Brunskill née Cockle (born 1923)
I worked at County Electrical Services in St Andrew’s Street South near the corner with Kings Road for five shillings a week on leaving school at 14.
Eventually I was getting paid ten shillings weekly because I helped with the wages. However when war broke out things definitely improved for me as I got a job at the Ministry of Food at the town hall (now Market Cross).
My wages doubled to one pound a week!
One of my tasks was to make sure any unclaimed ration books issued at The Corn Exchange, were taken down to the police station where they were locked in a cell as they were very valuable.
Once a policeman pulled my leg (I hoped) and threatened to lock me up with them as well!
I can still remember my ration book number, it was TYAM/3. I left my job in 1948 to get married.
My husband Edward or ‘Ted’ as he was always known was born in 1917 in Blyth, Northumberland. He came down with his dad to see relatives, the Hammonds who kept a shop in Risbygate Street where they sold amongst other goods, cigarettes and tobacco.
When the war came he enlisted in the Royal East Kent Regiment, known as the ‘Buffs’. Going over to France he was caught up in the rearguard action to hold up the German army from getting to Dunkirk to prevent the evacuation.
He was captured and spent the rest of the war as a POW in Stalag 17. Whilst there he wrote a letter to his brother not knowing that he was dead.
He learnt to speak fluent German and when the war ended was asked to work as an interpreter for the American Army.
He reckoned he had done his bit and ‘politely’ refused. He came back to live in Risbygate Street and met me. He was just sixty two when he died.
Our Wartime — Betty Woodward née Ransome (born 1921) and Joan Horsham née Ransome (born 1923)
When I was twenty one I was called up and went to work in a factory near London making aircraft parts on a lathe. It was boring work.
My sister Joan was not called up as she had married her husband John in 1943, although she did volunteer work as a fire watcher. Joan’s husband John came from Cheshire and was billeted in Bury when she met him.
He was in the Royal Army Service Corps and she can still remember his army number, 223250.
After the war he went to work at Nice & Co as a coach trimmer.
My husband Harry ‘John’ whom I had known for a long time was in the Territorials and joined the Royal Artillery; he was at Dunkirk and North Africa. Post war he went back to working for Shell.
When the war ended me and Joan went up to London for the celebrations with our young brother Brian. We ended up sleeping on the kerb in The Strand.
Following Dad — Brian Ransome (born 1934)
In WW2 at the bottom of Petticoat Lane where the BP fuel station is now (2015), there was a mortar emplacement manned by the home guard.
Basically a five foot deep pit with a short concrete pillar in the middle, on top of this was a stainless steel spigot on which the mortar sat.
We were then living in Vinery Road having moved from the Priors Estate. Like everybody else we had an Anderson air-raid shelter in the back garden.
The P.O.Ws from the camp on Hardwick Heath came by our house in open top lorries on the way to work in farmers’ fields.
Because Rougham Airfield wasn’t too far away, whenever there was a plane crash we used to get on our bikes and get to the crash site and try to retrieve something, if you could get a piece of Perspex you had done well.
My father Bertie, who was born in 1897, enlisted when he was seventeen becoming a dispatch rider in France. He was in the home guard during WW2.
It was his love of motor cycling that I followed at the age of fifteen. I even when to France on my motorbike after the end of the war to follow in Dad’s footsteps.
Splice the Mainbrace — Spencer Derek Bluett (born 1925)
I joined the Royal Navy in 1942 serving as a stoker on the King George V which was inspected by the King and Queen before setting off for the Pacific.
As they left, the order was given to ‘splice the mainbrace’, the rum ration being doled out!
When I crossed the equator for the first time I was presented with a framed certificate known as ‘Domain of Neptunus Rex’.
As I worked down in the ‘stoke hole’ I never got to see any action but I remember one day the
padre giving us a running commentary when we were attacked by kamikazes, very worrying that.
When we arrived in Tokyo for the Japanese surrender, I was one of twelve sailors who rode in the back of an open truck with tin hats and fixed bayonets to re-open the British Embassy.
We saw loads of Japanese crying and throwing themselves on the ground, some even committing Hari-Kari as they couldn’t believe their Emperor had surrendered.
Back at our ship I attended one of the hospital ships with our lads who had been P.O.Ws, they were in a sorry
state. One of them asked me to write a letter to his mum and dad which I did and later got a lovely thank you letter back which I still have.
Twins — David Addy (born 1948)
My father was one of a pair of twins, his name was John French Addy; his brother was Horace Dorrien Addy, both named after WWI generals.
The twins were born in December 1914 in Kent. My father did several rural jobs like charcoal burning and working on farms, he even worked for Kent County Council painting the white lines on the roads.
About 1938 he joined up as a dispatch rider in the Royal Corps of Signals.
During the war his unit was posted to Bury and was based on the corner of Southgate Street and Maynewater Lane.
He was billeted at 2, Southgate Street where he met my mum, Pamela Petit who lived there.
Flying from Rougham — Fred Roberts (born 1931)
My early life was in Sicklesmere; my grandfather had a haulage company and undertakers business there.
The Americans stationed at Rougham Airfield came to the Sicklesmere Rushbrooke Arms for a drink and I got friendly with them, I was fourteen then.
I had joined the army cadets and one day I went to the airfield in my uniform this allowed me to go onto the base.
Whilst there I was asked if I wanted to go up. Cor, did I. Altogether I had three flights, one over East Anglia, another to Ireland where I was violently sick because of bad weather and the last in a Flying Fortress over Germany dropping leaflets.
The war was over by then. When VJ day came, the pubs in the Sicklesmere area had celebration bottles of beer.
My uncle ‘Oweny’ Plumb and his mate got the contract to deliver them to the various local pubs starting at The Fox & Hounds at Bradfield.
By the time they got to the last one, The Metcalf Arms at Hawstead, they were absolutely sloshed. I had to drive the lorry home, still only fourteen.
First Oranges — John Abbott (born 1935)
My father was a clerk at Greene King and also in The Suffolk Mounted Yeomanry. He was called up and went straight off to France.
We had moved from Victoria Street to Priors Avenue just before then.
Rationing was on; we got our meat from Fulchers the butchers in St John’s Street and groceries from Olivers in Abbeygate Street. All dairy produce like butter, cheese and margarine had to be weighed out and wrapped up in brown paper.
There was no such thing as bananas or oranges.
Near the end of the war, the shop girl there saved my mother two oranges for my brother and me, what
a treat.
Because Greene King looked after their staff that had gone off to war, that enabled me to go to the King Edward Grammar Prep School from the Convent School. I was six then staying at the Grammar school until I was seventeen.
After father got back from Dunkirk, he was posted off to Bournemouth and we as a family went down to see him by train which kept stopping because of air raids.
We were with him a whole week. One thing that sticks in my mind was when the American convoys went down Cemetery Hill (West Road).
It had a real sharp bend at the bottom and as we waved the trucks to slow down the Americans threw us chewing gum and sweeties as a thank you.
Entertaining the Troops — Daphne Elliston née Warren (born 1932)
My father went into the Royal Engineers when I was seven years old.
I was at the Feoffment School then and all us children had to do practices with gas masks in case there was a gas attack. Getting the mask on quick was important.
We lived on the corner of Looms Lane and Northgate Street — the house has since been demolished.
A woman and her young daughter were billeted with us; this woman’s husband was away in the army.
My mother had a knock on the front door one night and there stood an American military policeman. He asked my mother if the lodger could keep her window locked as American G Is were seen climbing through to be ‘entertained’ on occasions.
Mum was most indignant.
Respectable soldiers — Gwen Roberts née Pawsey (born 1931)
During the war we lived in Grove Park and had four soldiers billeted with us, they were very friendly. We knitted socks for them.
I was allowed to go to dances at the Barracks at fourteen as I was escorted home. One of them said that when his mother died he would come back to Bury as he liked it so much, and he did. He became a friend for life.
I can also remember Dad being in the Observer Corps during the war.
Every Sunday I used to get a bottle of beer from the Falcon. I would take it with some food Mum had made to Westley Airfield where Dad and his mate Charlie Bonner were on duty.
Charlie was an auctioneer at Lacey Scott.
A Steep Hill — Ted Ashton (born 1941)
My father was a solicitor in the town and we lived at 91, Hospital Road, a bungalow facing West Road — a steep hill with a sharp bend, since much altered.
Our fence was demolished by convoys during the war careering down the hill.
During one incident a truck towing its trailer lost its load, a large bomb. The driver asked mother if he could use the phone to report what had happened, he was lucky as not everyone was on the phone then.
Mother went outside to offer another chap a cup of tea and saw him sitting astride the bomb lighting his cigarette.
Startled she asked, “should you be doing that?”, he replied in an American accent re-assuring her “don’t worry Mam, it ain’t primed”!
Once an Italian POW came a cropper on his bike into our fence; he said in broken English “not a good hill to come down with no brakes”!
He asked for something to straighten his forks and wheel and then went on his way.
A couple of weeks later, a man knocked on the door and when Mother answered it was given two little silver aeroplanes made from a beaten florin (2/- piece).
The rather nice Italian man said they were for the little boys, meaning my brother and me.
Once mother saw some chaps digging the other side of our fence at the bottom of our garden. When she asked what they were doing they replied, “This is the second line of defence”.
Mother just said “well, what side are we on?”
I can just about remember the end of war celebrations in the Abbey Gardens. At one stall you paid for three darts to throw at a picture of Hitler that worried me no end.
Being Prepared — Michael Robertson (born 1932)
When war came I was attending the Feoffment, all the widows there were sandbagged up. If there was an air-raid we were to go into the underground part of the brewery.
There was no school canteen and I used to take an Oxo cube for dinner time, the caretaker would give me the hot water.
One particular day I remember we had the day off school as it might be used as a possible casualty post for the air-borne troops that went to Arnhem.
There were lots of these troops around the town then.
Anyway a couple of days later I saw gliders being towed in the air over Bury. About them going to Arnhem I
learnt about later on.
Locally the army prepared for any invasion by having large concrete blocks ready to shut off the road as underneath the railway bridge in Eastgate Street, where the A14 flyover is now.
The bridge carried the line to Sudbury and a concrete pill box was built near to it; some poor chap died in its construction.
At the back of the houses in Eastgate Street, soldiers unrolled concertina barbed wire and up by Hollow Road where we lived there was a tank trap.
Times were hard then and my mother used to buy a shilling’s worth of meat with her ration coupons but also eked it out with a pennyworth of corn beef.
I suppose everybody else had to do something similar.
Mum was cross — Peter Dove (born 1927)
When WW2 came, my mother cried as she had lost two brothers in the First.
It also angered her that my father Wilfred who was born in 1899 and had also been injured in the First should then turn round and volunteer for the Second.
Like her, I couldn’t understand why.
Funnily enough mother was called up working on tanks at Bobys.
Although I was registered I wasn’t quite old enough to be called up and when national service came I was too old.
Rum Work — Ivan Abbott (born 1933)
My father was in the TA, getting called up when war broke out, and going over to France with the BEF; then evacuated home via Dunkirk.
Wartime Bury was much the same for everyone else. During the war there was double summertime, clocks being put forward two hours allowing farmers to get the harvest in.
Towards the end of the war I can remember German P.O.Ws from Fornham coming to the Railway Mission Hall in Fornham Road and singing to us as a choir.
Tears — Ron Colson (born 1929)
During the war we had three soldiers billeted at my father’s pub, The Spread Eagle. We also had the Home Guard and the Army practice manoeuvres in the area.
One day a soldier let off a tear gas canister in the dry Linnet bed right under my mother’s kitchen window. It nearly filled the place, our poor cat’s eyes streaming and when the regulars came in for their pint, theirs as well.
The officer in charge apologised but mother called him everything under the sun.
Hurricanes — Eileen Fuller (formerly Jennings) Née Tooke (born 1920)
Just before I was called up in WW2 the air raid siren went and a single German plane went overhead, we all just made it to the shelter not knowing if it was going to drop bombs on us.
After doing some training at Letchworth I was sent to Witney in Oxfordshire to work on the tail planes of Hurricanes at the De Havilland factory.
I was billeted in a B&B in the town a twenty-five minute walk from the factory but didn’t wear a uniform. I liked going to dances in Witney Town Hall and met my first husband Ellis there, he was a Mosquito pilot.
We moved back to Bury in 1953 living in Albert Crescent, Hardwick Lane and Queens Road. Sadly Ellis died at an early age in 1968.
Cheese — Gerald ‘Gerry’ Travers (born 1935)
I used to go over to Rougham airfield; the American soldiers were always very smartly turned out.
During 1944 there were thousands of soldiers in tents up by the East Anglian School, I later found out they were probably waiting for D-Day.
The soldiers were very generous. Once an American soldier gave me what looked like an orange sweet, it wasn’t; it was the first time I tasted orange cheese.
I found air raid sirens very frightening. One day during 1945 at the rear of the railway station known to us as ‘The Chalks’ I heard an almighty thump above my head, two of our planes had collided.
I saw a parachute open and the planes go into the slurry pits by the Sugar Beet Factory. The next day I went down there and saw a lone parachute dangling from a dead tree, the poor airman had probably drowned.
I used to go up to Hardwick Heath where a P.O.W camp was, they obviously had no intention of escaping as the soldiers patrolled from inside the fence.
French Canadians — Sheila Bayne née Forbes (born 1938)
My home for about eleven years was in Guildhall Street. During the war we were issued with gas masks at the British Legion and had fire drills whenever the sirens went off but I was never frightened.
Whenever a plane crashed, boys used to get a souvenir like a piece of shrapnel, only years later did I find out what that word actually meant. By the way parachute silk was highly collectable.
During WW2 we had two great aunts stay with us for three years. My father had scooped them up from Worthing and brought them to Bury for safety.
He worked shifts and weekends at the Hand Laundry which he and my mother owned. He had a reserved occupation for the war effort, troop work it was called.
One night when he was working, there was a knock on the door. My uncle answered it and there stood two good looking uniformed soldiers who spoke French. Because our house had two small doors they assumed we were a pub and wanted to come in.
Uncle told them to clear off or he would set the dogs on them.
Sure enough, our two ‘vicious’ spaniels flew down the stairs and lay down at their feet.
Fortunately the two chaps realised their error, smiled and left much to the disappointment of my mother and her sister.
Living in Cullum Road — David Ridgeon (born 1932)
When the war came my father put up blackout frames on the windows of our house in Cullum Road (no longer there), it wasn’t much of a job as we only had four.
He worked as a plate layer on the now defunct Bury to Sudbury railway line and was quite good at obtaining the odd rabbit that strayed too close to the line if you know what I mean.
Rationing was tough on my mother, like everyone else she did the best she could with what she had. She would make the most marvellous scrambled eggs from the powdered egg.
I heard a lot of people discussing the war but I was very confused by it all. At my first school, St Peters Infants, my earliest memory is the disappointment at having to play a triangle instead of a tambourine.
We celebrated Empire Day back then. I liked watching the women who wove camouflage netting on the ‘Bungy’ the sloping forecourt that leads up to the Hunter Club (2015).
Bluebells — Bridget James née Reynolds (born 1936)
During September 1944 there were lots of troops around in Bury. We had some billeted with us.
However some of them upset my father one day by taking down our wooden gate to use on a fire presumably to keep warm.
My mother smoothed over the situation by baking some scones, a case of forgive and forget.
Dad was in the Home Guard which used to meet at the Sugar Beet factory so knew a little bit of what was going on, preparation for Arnhem.
One day a doodlebug went over Bury and landed somewhere in Hengrave. My father managed the woods there and went to investigate, a scene of devastation; it would be a long time before we could go and see the bluebells again, something we always enjoyed doing.
Ham for Tea — Keith Steed (born 1942)
My mum was a housewife, dad a furniture dealer, he was called up before I was born in Hollow Road.
When the air raid sirens sounded me and several other small kids would get on our trikes and pedal as fast as we could as we were frightened.
Our parents used to grab hold of us and run to the shelter at the back of Chapmans Café opposite the sugar beet factory. We never used the Anderson shelter in our garden.
On one bombing raid a German bomber did manage to hit one of the nearby houses killing someone. They were trying to destroy the bridge over the east coast railway, one crater was only a few yards from the line.
American bombers used to take off from Rougham, disappearing over the horizon.
One horrible incident I can remember was an airborne collision between two planes resulting in a body lying in Hollow Road, my mother hastily pulled me away to stop me looking at it.
Although I was very young, I still can see it today in my mind’s eye as if it was yesterday.
After the war, German POWs had to fill in the tank trap that extended from the beet factory, past Charlie Flack’s farm and out to Great Barton rail crossing. We kids used to help them.
They were clever blokes that made figures from chalk and wove baskets which they sold. Something else they also sold was the ham from their sandwiches, ham being scarce and not available to the locals.
With the money the P.O.Ws bought cigarettes. Over the course of a year, one of them called Hans befriended the gang of seven kids I belonged to.
On the day he was sent back home he waved goodbye at us with his white handkerchief as we stood on Hollow Road bridge.
A German P.O.W Story — Johann Hopfensperger (born 1923)
I was called up for the Wehrmacht in 1940 and joined the 23rd tank division. Two war injuries I received still affect me to this day.
One was when I was sandwiched between two tanks resulting in my leg being damaged, the second from hand grenade shrapnel in my neck on the Russian front.
However it was whilst I was in Normandy in 1944 that I was captured by the Americans and taken to Cherbourg.
There were two ships waiting to take P.O.Ws to Southampton, one newly painted the other not so. I said to my friend let’s get on the old one as it was less likely to get bombed by the Germans!
In England I was taken first to Birmingham, where I spent Christmas 1944 then on to Colchester before ending up in Bury St Edmunds. I alternated between a small camp at Drinkstone and Bury before settling down at the camp at Hardwick.
I went to several farms in the area; one at Boxted near Glemsford, was where I had to get up at 5am in the morning to milk forty cows.
I was asked whether I would help with the harvest, I said no thanks as we only got paid camp money for use in the canteen there. The
beer wasn’t too bad here providing you strained the hops out first!
When working for Mr Gittus I was told along with others to pick up all the potatoes in the field before the tractor and trailer returned. Once
he said to me “how come you Germans always finish before those Italians”?
I was in Tilbury when the war finished but came back to Bury in 1947 although I wasn’t allowed the freedom out of the camp until a year later when I could go into town.
I got to know Mr Taylor, the hairdresser next to the Odeon, and via him acquired an American serviceman’s jacket which I dyed in an old tin bath.
With the help of a Mrs Hawkins, I then got a ladies long coat, gave it to George the tailor at the camp and he made a smart pair of trousers from it for me.
I was then able to walk about town unrecognisable as a P.O.W until one lady came up to me and said, “I know you you’re one of them P.O.W’s”.
That lady was Vera Brettell who went to dances with me at the Co-op Hall and later became my wife.
After we married, I worked at Hawkins Fish & Chip shop in Brentgovel Street and went on to own the Westley Estate Fish & Chip shop, then progressing onto the one in Risbygate Street which I purchased off Mrs Brinkley.
Everyone came to know me as John.
