S2E3
· 37:55
I'm honored to bring you Allen Chalk's intimate and beautiful recollection of his wartime childhood in Wiltshire. You'll hear Allen talk about wartime food, kale, stinging nettles, and bananas, the importance of ferrets, maneuvers in the village coming across a crashed Nazi fighter plane, and his life after the war ended.
Allen:It's a pleasure to talk. I love talking anyway, so it's not hard for me to talk about years ago. During the war, being brought up during the war with with a big family. There was five boys and mother and father living in an old bungalow at the back of the farm, a chop pit farm. No electric, no water laid on.
Allen:We had a tap outside the back door. No toilets, only up in the garden. And it was hard all during the war. And that's why I like to talk about it because people don't realize how people lived along that time. My day, I was at school then, mostly during the war.
Allen:I spent all the war at school until about '45, and the war finished '45. Yeah. But I was started work before the war finished. But just walking to school, we walked to school. It was quite a way from the other side of the village, right to school and back.
Allen:And we used to walk back to lunch and back again. And and our our clothes oh, we all passed down clothes, you know, because I was a second oldest, and I never had nothing new, never had nothing new. My elder brother had everything new, as what happened in all families. And I remember one time someone gave me a coat, and the coats always come down to the knee, always, because that's kept kept you warm. And I was walking home one day, and it was pouring rain.
Allen:And so I got home and all we had was kitchen range, and you could see the the fire, and I hung the coat up close to the fire, didn't I? Kitchen range, and scorched it in the back, quite a big scorch, and granny was living with us at the time, and she said, I'll report I'll repair that for you. I'll put a patch on there. So she couldn't find enough to put one patch, so she had to put two patches on this blue coat, gray material on a blue coat. But those days, you know, you'd put up with that and I I went to school back school with this big patch or patches on my coat, proud as a louse, and I thought a word of it, but nowadays people wouldn't do that now.
Allen:They wouldn't do that now. Yeah. It it to me, it was a very hard time, always all through the war, you know. The food the food was wasn't much food. We used to go out in the fields and pick kale, the tops of kale, swedes, and things like that, you know, to eat.
Allen:I know mother said once, I haven't got any green stuff, Alan, you know, and and I was about, oh, 12 years old. And I'd already heard that somebody said, well, go ahead and pick some tops of the stinging out and cook them. So I went and picked these stinging out and took them in and cooked them up, and they were delicious. And, you know, we didn't think like that. Do want during Christmas, well, Christmas wasn't like we had six years Christmas, and it that was very hard at Christmas because there wasn't much to have, you know.
Allen:We used to have used to have a cockroach, always kept a cockroach because we had chicken in the garden, and we always kept no cockroach. And that was our that was our our lunch, Christmas lunch, was this old cockroach, you know, there wasn't much meat on it, you know, that's all we had. And things was very hard. People didn't realize now how hard it was during a war. We were living in this old bungalow.
Allen:There was there was four boys to start with, and the one was born in the war. Granny was living with we were only at three bedrooms. Granny was living with us as well. We had an evacuee come down from London, One of our cousins, and she was little girl, so she lived in the bedroom with granny, mother and father in another bedroom, and it's the youngest child, and four four boys in other bedroom. And that's how we that's how we lived all through the war.
Allen:And we got on well, got on well. You know, there's no no arguments. There was four of us boys. Dennis, he was the eldest one. He used to always sleep with Ronald.
Allen:Ronald was the middle one. And I was the second one, Alan, and and I slept with with with brother John. And we never had big double beds. We had what they call three quarter beds. Yeah.
Allen:He never fought. No. He was a very happy family, you know. Mother and father was they were quite young, really, because I think mother when Dennis was born, I think she was about 18. Wow.
Allen:And she was about 19 when I was born, so and father was just a year older than what she was, so they were a very young family. Yeah.
Estelle:When you went back at lunchtime from school, what type of food did you eat at lunchtime?
Allen:Yeah, we just ate, Well, there was a was a bakehouse in the in the valley, as you know, and you could get a bit of bread quite easily, go down the bakehouse and say, please, can I have a loaf? You know? It yeah. And we got plenty of cheese because father was working on the land, and the land workers had extra cheese, which was a good thing. You know?
Allen:And anything that was about, you know, you just anything. You never you never say, oh, I don't like that. I don't like that, because you ate with what was there. Did
Estelle:you did you get any meat apart from
Allen:the cobwebs? Rabbits. We lived on rabbits. Yes. And and I think everyone else lived on rabbits up around the farm.
Allen:There's lots of rabbits about. I know father, he he we had two ferrets. Everyone had a few ferrets. Mhmm. And he used go ferrets, and he was dairyman, so he used to work seven days a week, really, you know, but on Saturdays, lunchtime, he always used to go and catch a few rabbits.
Allen:And with one furry, he used to get lost. He always got down in the bury and wouldn't come out. And so he used to say to me, Alan, you go up, sit by the hole where I've left the bag and wait for that fart to come out, so I had to you couldn't sit there all the afternoon waiting for a fart to come out. Yeah. We used do things like that.
Allen:There's one thing Jonah wore, It wasn't a banana. No one's seen a banana during the war. For six years, we didn't see a banana. In be children, you know, in in when bananas come, we couldn't believe what they were, you know, they and and there wasn't an ice cream, not an ice cream during the war, not one ice cream. And that was six years, and that was a long time, you know.
Allen:I I know not long ago, the prime minister it wasn't very many years ago, if like, years ago, France. And he said they were gonna lock down. Or no, they were going to open up the lock for for so many days. And that annoyed me because I thought myself, well, we are we were locked down because COVID. And he said people wouldn't like, if they had to go five days over Christmas, shut down.
Allen:And we went six years shut down. So it you know, things like that do annoy me anyway. If I had went through it myself, you know, I'm one that don't like to talk about what someone else has told me. I like to talk about what I've done myself.
Estelle:What other things have you done that that you really enjoy talking about?
Allen:Playing football. I played football for Broadchalk for fifteen years.
Estelle:In what position?
Allen:It's in in the Salisbury district league.
Estelle:Yeah.
Allen:Those days there was a football team in every village, every village. There was a cricket team in every village, and we played we played tennis. We had tennis grass tennis court, and, yeah, and things like that. And in the village hall had a a billiard table and things like that. We all went there in the evenings and done things like that, you know.
Allen:We made our own enjoyment, you know. But nowadays, they can't seem to do that because they don't need to do that. But we we didn't have nothing else.
Estelle:Did you used to go for walks in the countryside and things like
Allen:Oh, yes. Yeah.
Estelle:Was that a daily thing or a because you walk every day.
Allen:Oh, yeah. I walk every day. I used to walk then a lot. Loved walking. I can remember going back during the war when the maneuvers was about in the village, you know, there's soldiers, they were maneuvering all around the villages and that.
Allen:And so us lads, was about three or four of us, we said, oh, let's go on and maneuver. So we all had a everyone had a trolley, pram wheels and a box on it and some shelves, you know, the folks. So we started off and we went all up nearly up to five foot, I think we were, until we cut across the Bauerchoke and down, and we've got in trouble because when we got home, we would we've been lost, you see, during the war, and that was a bad thing to be out. And we got towed off because we'd done our little walk right up round, you know, and, yeah, our mothers, they went mad because we were out away from home because you didn't walk much then. You know, you're always told to keep in groups in case an aeroplane come over because they were always told that if an aeroplane comes in, especially if it's a smaller one, jump under the bushes, go anywhere out of sight, whereas the machine can act, you know, know, things like that.
Allen:Yeah.
Estelle:So you lived with a threat from the sky?
Allen:Yeah. When
Estelle:did you feel that that threat had gone when you were walking in the landscape?
Allen:Well, after V Day
Estelle:Right.
Allen:That lifted it. V Day, I can't remember it well, we were, it was as nice that the war was over in Europe, and so I know the farmer said, right, we'll have the Delf, and so they arranged they arranged some races and and all sorts of things. I've been one of the fields up in Jesus there, invited the village up. Some of the people in the village managed to make a cake or or got some bread. There weren't much butter about then, but they made they got enough to have a few sandwiches and a few cakes, and everybody enjoyed their self, you know, and sang and danced and and and then the farmer just along the road from here, he had a straw an old straw rick, and he said, you can have that straw rick where you light a fire because no one was light a fire during a war.
Allen:You didn't light especially at night.
Estelle:Because it would attract the
Allen:Yeah. Yeah. We went up there, and Jean's he supplied two tractors and trailers and put and took all the people from the village up up this straw straw rick, and we lit the straw rick up there and and danced around the straw rick of the evening. V Day. You know, things like that sticks in your mind.
Allen:And
Estelle:then was it I suppose that celebration helped you kind of accept that the war was
Allen:Oh, it lifted your It did. Yeah. The weight seemed to come off your shoulders, and you could do anything. You could, you know, you could please yourself. Other than that, you you couldn't because you've got if you went somewhere, you always thought there may be someone come through the hedge after you.
Allen:Always. Because there was there was planes, aeroplanes come down, know, and then some of them got out of it in in Sarnohoe's and in the bushes and, you know, all roundabout, yeah, All things like that was going on. I can remember one aeroplane, and this was during the war. German aeroplane came down, Feuerter, up at Feuerbachen, just up the road from here, and if any of the boys heard there was something about, we were on our bicycles in there. And so we raced up there before the security got there on our bicycles, about four of us, and we walked in where this plane just it just crashed in in it's still smoldering in that, and there was body everywhere.
Allen:If it that didn't frighten us with because it was German or Nazi. Mustn't say German. Nazi. And it didn't frighten us, you know. And we tried to find some souvenirs, that's what we were after, souvenirs.
Allen:And all we were after was some perspex, the windscreen, very thick perspex that was. And what we used to do, we'd make rings, burn a hole, have a little jigsaw and cut it out and foil it all down like a ring, you know, and make a little leave a little notch for the top and give it to your girlfriend. And and I heard someone say, if anyone had one now, they're worth a lot of money. You know, but that's what we used to do. It's amazing.
Allen:Yeah.
Estelle:But I'm very struck by that concept of sort of like threat in the landscape, that really for me that really brings it home, because you were scared from the air and you were scared from the hedges.
Allen:Yeah. Yeah? Yeah.
Estelle:And then your mum was scared too.
Allen:That's right. Yeah. Very scared.
Estelle:So you were all scared?
Allen:Yeah. I can remember my mom, she was very scared. It was we were living in the bungalow at the back of the farm, and we could look across to Southampton and they had blitzed in there, terrible blitz quite early on too.
Estelle:Yeah, because of the port I suppose. Yeah. Yeah.
Allen:And and we could see the sky was sky was red. You could hear the bombs, you could see the sky red. And father was down in the pub, and mother said, Alan, she said, would I go down the pub with her? I was only about 12 year old, I think, 11 or 12 brass. And she's left Dennis, the older one, to stay with the other boys.
Allen:And we walked down the pub, She said, can't stay here on my own. She said, we gotta go and get dad. So we walked down. We couldn't see a thing because no one had a light, not even a light with somebody's window, you had to black that out, that was one thing you had to do was black your windows out with with blankets. And so we walked down looking up at the hedge row to see where the the row was, got down to the pub, listened outside, and she could hear him in there.
Allen:She said, I can hear him in there, she said. Go on go in, Alan, and tell him, sent me in, she wouldn't go in because women didn't go in the pubs then. So I went in, seen the landlady, and I said, could you tell dad we want him home quickly? So he comes straight out, you know, and walked home with us, and that was very frightening, you know, going down in the middle well, it went in the middle of night, it's about eight, 09:00 at night, seeing these flashes, then the Southampton and hearing the bombs going, very frightening.
Estelle:Very close. And they had the, they had that big munitions factory at Julmark, didn't they? Yeah, yeah,
Allen:oh yeah, there was priests all round there, all the time.
Estelle:That must have been a target.
Allen:Oh, they never got it, did they?
Estelle:No, they never did.
Allen:The searchlight was just on the top of the hill there, up there, up on the top, and that's the only bombs that we had in Brookshoke, It was three bombs. They tried to get the searchlight, but they missed the searchlight. They hit electric wires. It runs along there now and cut those wires off, those electric And that's the only three bombs that dropped Wow. In this cut this area.
Estelle:It's so much to think about, isn't it, Alan?
Allen:Yeah. I started work just before the war finished. And I tell him my my wage then, I was working from seven in the morning to five at night, and Saturdays we worked from seven to twelve. And my wage was £1.04 shillings a week. That's why I had to but I had to give mother some because that's what you had to do.
Allen:You had to go to work, earn some money, and pay your keep. And I used to give mother 10 shillings, and the 10 shillings was mine, and the 4 shillings went to Williams' club, think it was. We were we went Williams' club that that used to do the clothes and things like that, and that's how we used to use it. And then after after the the war finished then, it was hard very hard because it was rationing kept on till, I think, somewhere in about 54, I think, somewhere in about then. That's so long.
Allen:Rationing. Yeah. It was and Petra was rationing and all things like that, you know, but then you were earning it a little bit more. When I was 16, I got the football on the thing on the wall now, and I played in a playering match at Bradford, and I was playing against I was playing in the in the tractor class, but there was horses playing by the side of me, and we were all entered, you know, in this playing match. And and then they gave the prizes out at the end of the playroom match, and the tractor class, I won first prize.
Allen:And then they always said who was the champion playroom of the day, and and I was the champion playman of the day, and I I beat the horses on that day, and and I mean, horseplayman was marvelous.
Estelle:And yeah. And you were only 16?
Allen:I was 16.
Estelle:Yeah. Did that have an impact on your life?
Allen:I think it did. How? I think it did because it made me feel better, bigger. Because I was always at home. Dennis, my brother, he was quite a clever boy, and he could do anything, you know.
Allen:And and I was one that didn't learn very much. And I remember father calling me. He said, Dennis got the brains. He said, and you're not much good at all, you know, and that hurt. Yeah.
Allen:But when I won that, you know, I was one of the broader ones, you know. Yeah.
Estelle:Because a lot of people were ploughing, weren't they? It's not like today, is it?
Allen:Oh, no. Then it was a big deal, wasn't it? Yeah. I went to I went to another play match about a week after that one, and I won a first prize. Oh.
Allen:And that's that big thing over on the water now, big certificate from Rumsums and Jeffries. I had presented to me, and I won first prize there. And then I just after that, I went to a play match, and it said I never no one was there with a camera so I got a paper cutting of it, that's all, and it said 67, try their hand at ploughing 67. Wow. A big ploughing match, then at Warmister.
Allen:Oh. And I won in my class, I won first prize, and and then we all wait for the champion to be, you know, announced in there. I was champion playman of of six of my 60 sixes. I was one of them. It was '67 playman.
Allen:I won the championship.
Estelle:Amazing. And you must have been one of the younger.
Allen:Yes. Yes. Yeah. I was think I was then in late teens then in that one. Yeah.
Allen:We lived no electric in the bungalow, no water. We had a tap outside, and that come from the farm, farm water. And the toilet was up in the garden about 20 meters walk to get to the toilet up in the garden. And when you had to come home, you bring this the log you saw up, you take it indoors, and then somebody would say, oh, the bucket wants emptying. So out you'd go, dig a hole in the garden, go and empty the bucket, it's in the toilet, fill it all in, clean the bucket up, wash it out, disinfect it in the bucket, put the bucket back, and go back in.
Allen:And then you're gonna that was tea, and everyone had to do that, everyone. I'd done it myself, I lived over the road from here, and we had a toilet in the woodshed then. We'd gone up with hots then. We had a toilet in the woodshed, but you had to empty it in the in the garden. Done it myself with with my wife, and we had one boy at the time then.
Allen:Yeah. And people won't believe they they don't think it ever happened, these things.
Estelle:I find it really difficult to to visualize that as a reality. What other things are there that for you are really different?
Allen:Gardening. Gardening? Gardening.
Estelle:How come?
Allen:Well, because you had to grow enough vegetables to last twelve months and you had to make sure you had the right seeds in, they come at the right time. And with potatoes, you had to grow enough potatoes to last twelve months. And that's why all the allotments over in the village now, they're grown over now, most of them, but then everyone was taken, every allotment was taken, there was in this release there were six allotment plots, every allotment was taken, was a waiting list for allotments then, because that was life. To grow enough vegetables, we used to try to grow 500 weight of potatoes to last a twelve month. Now you just go to the supermarket, get and what annoys me, they put a date on there to say what and that annoys me because our potatoes was kept in a hessian bag, always hessian, in a hessian bag in the woodshed, covered it with straw so they didn't get frosted.
Allen:And that's a different thing now, frost, Because those days we used to get two inches of frost on the water troughs, two inches of a night. Now we don't get frost not very often. No. Much different.
Estelle:So when you were gardening, I mean, that's such a large amount of potatoes, Alan, isn't it? Yeah. Everything had to
Allen:be dug with with a fork. Everything. There was no machine then.
Estelle:What else did you plant?
Allen:Everything you needed, carrots, sweets, parsnips, everything, green stuff. They don't nowadays, they get rabbit trouble up the allotments I know now, but there was no rabbits in the allotment then because there were so many people catching rabbits. And pigeons, we didn't get pigeon trouble like they do now. They get pigeon trouble terrible now, but those days you didn't seem to get pigeon trouble. Brussels sprouts, used to Christmas, you had to have your Brussels sprouts, and you wanted get them in the right everybody knew exactly when to plant the seeds so that you had the right thing at the right time.
Estelle:So was there quite a community down on the allotments?
Allen:Oh yeah, oh it was every you go up through that allotment and there may be twenty, thirty people out there digging, talking, you know, and it was good, it was great. I walk through there now, some mornings, or most mornings I walk up through there, and it annoys me because these allotments are all grown over and they were beautiful, they were there weren't a weed nowhere, the grass was cut and cut a a hook, not with a mower. Yeah. All cut with a hook, and, yeah, much different. It do annoy me to see them like they are.
Estelle:When do you think you started feeling sort of because you seem very comfortable in the landscape. You seem very comfortable
Allen:Well, when I
Estelle:on the land.
Allen:Yeah. Because I was one of those that never felt I mean, a lot of you used to say, oh, I got a dog today or or somebody's on my shoulders, you know, and I I just don't feel like doing anything. Never felt like that. Never. If they told me to do a job, I would do it.
Allen:Didn't matter what it was. Always enjoyed doing it. And that's why I think I got on so well because if you were one of the better workers, you already got the better job. You knew that. There's so many on the farm waiting to take the better jobs, but if you were good enough and showed you were good enough, then you got the better jobs, and I always got the better jobs.
Allen:They always used to say to me, how can you get these jobs? Why would you get these jobs? You know, I say, well, do them properly and you'll get the jobs.
Estelle:And then also your ploughing, you you obviously, like, had a knack for it all.
Allen:Oh, yeah.
Estelle:Yeah. Didn't you? You had a
Allen:knack for it. You knew
Estelle:You had an understanding.
Allen:Yeah. You just had it in you. Had to be perfect. Everything had to be perfect. And and I've worked like that all my life.
Allen:Everything I do now, do things now, and it always gotta be perfect. Still do my own, I do all my own garden now.
Estelle:I've seen your garden, do you remember showing it to me?
Allen:Yeah, you can there's not much then that's growing now, but it's quite tidy.
Estelle:Yes, wonderful. Yeah. And you can see in it the habit of a lifetime of sustenance from the land.
Allen:Yeah. Yeah. And then when I started courting, I started courting my wife, there she is there, she was brought up from an easy girl anyway,
Estelle:so When did you first see her, I mean, in that sense?
Allen:First I seen her was at school, she came at the same school with me, but she was at class higher than me.
Estelle:But when did you first see her as a
Allen:of
Estelle:as a
Allen:you know,
Estelle:as someone
Allen:When I was about 16, I think. Yeah.
Estelle:Can you remember where you were?
Allen:No. I I think I was very friendly with her with her brother. Her brother was exactly same age as I was. Exactly. Within a few days.
Allen:And I used to go there a place a lot, you know, meet with her brother. And and she she went away for a few years as a cook in big houses, and then she came back to Broadchop as like a housekeeper to a school schoolmistress. And that's when I I think she came back '45, '40 '40, might have been '46 or something like that. And I won the Plymouth Match in '47, and I think I was just about going with her then. So, yeah, you were all my life, really.
Allen:No. You know, right from I was five years old when I came to Broadchalk, and she was born at Hutt Lodge, and that's right on top of the hill from between Broadchalk and Merton. She was born up there, and they came down into the village exactly about the same time as we came to Broadchalk, so and we met from then on, you know, and we married for sixty six years. Yeah.
Estelle:How lovely, Alan. And you lived in this house?
Allen:Yes. This house, we lived other side of the road for twenty years. That was Jesus' house. Yeah. And this was left to Kay, my wife, some old people that she looked after.
Allen:She looked after for years, and he left her the house. Oh. And the the letter was here. There's no water. There was a pump.
Allen:The pump is still out there now. And and I done most of it myself. We we made it in into a decent house and bigger house we built on a little bit. And I built on twice anyway. Built a kitchen on.
Allen:And in the in the kitchen, that was a yard where the kitchen is now. And yeah, I'd done most of it myself, one of my brothers helped quite a bit, but yeah. How wonderful.
Estelle:Yeah, it's wonderful, it's really homely, and it's got so much it's got so much evidence of your life, hasn't it, Annie?
Allen:Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. It's you can really see you've had I think we've been here over forty nine years. Oh,
Estelle:wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It does feel like that.
Estelle:Well, Alan, thank you so much for talking to me. It's honestly been amazing.
Allen:Thank you. Yeah. Yeah.
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