V E Day - 75 years on

I was in Abersoch, on the Llyn Peninsular, with my mum, her sisters and my cousins.

During the Buzz bomb campaign, beginning June 44,  we all lived in that corridor along which the VIs flew towards London. They dropped where ever the fuel ran out. It was best not to be standing underneath.

 What did you do in the war grandad ?  Built sandcastles. 

This photo was marked on the back by my mum. "Abersoch 1944" From left to right, " Val Sharp (her dad was with 8th Army as a medic - Uncle Norman was a dentst);  a stranger is next; then Michael Goodchild,  Caro Morris now Musson, (her dad. Uncle Morris was commanding a Corvette in the Atlantic) ; John Goodchild (I don't know where Uncle Ernest Goodchild was)  and there's me, Richard Woodham. If mum's got the date right, and it is 1944, then I was only 18 months at the time of this pic.

My memory is a little hazy. I think Mother and I lived with Aunty Joan Sharp and Val, Aunty Hilly Morris and Caro at "Benar Isaf". It is the house in the centre between the road and the slipway.

This picture was taken some years before the Second World War,  but it is nearer the way I remember things than a view of the present day village, with cars parked everywhere. "Benar Isaf" is still there but everything has been gentrified and poshed up. In those days, there were few cars and American DUWKs ferried ammunition from ships in the bay. I'd watch them come and go up the slipway from my place halfway up the stairs!  When there was a high tide water would slop over the garden wall!



I visited in 2017 and my special window and the house are still there!  It has changed a bit, but so have I!

I shall never forget the night of VE Day. There was a bonfire and lots of excitement. I travelled on the shoulders of a GI and surfed on the joyful surge of the crowd. The thing that caught my attention most on that night, was the big, low full moon and bright sparks from the fire flying up in front of it! 
In the following days us kids went for trips round the bay on the DUWKs and everyone was happy.


Meanwhile in Sutton, my grandad was hoisting the Union Flag to celebrate V.E.,  He had gone back to work as a bank manager for the duration.
The end of the war found my dad in North Italy, with the 8th Army., having fought their way from Egypt. He eventually ended up as part of the British Liberation Army looking after Rottenmann, a village in Austria; from where he sent me my first postcard.


It appears that I was not as careful, of what was to be an historic document, as I should have been. I see from the date that my dad expected me to be in Purley with Aunt Hilda and Uncle Morris at that time but I am almost certain that we were back in Edenbridge by then.
By haymaking time, I was back living at Little Broxham, close to  Prettyman's Farm, Four Elms; where my Uncle Bob Hale and Aunt Mary lived.  I remember raking hay in the fields with the POWs who spoilt me rotten. An Italian made me my own mini-hay rake. Dad didn't get home to the following year. It was not easy for anyone.
Then we had a time of being homeless,  living at my nan's in Sydenham, with Joan and Norman, Val and Mike Sharp and, of course, Uncle Gordon who never married.
At Sydenham, I went to school and played on bombsites as if it were the most natural thing in the world.........  Those buzz bombs did make a mess. War makes a mess. Not just on the outside either, on the inside as well! And when I see pictures of bombed out places I know in Syria, I realise we are still traumatised 75 years later!

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