I was living with my parents and my elder brothers and sister, Bob, Bill and Gladys, in the family farmhouse along St. Mary’s Road about a mile from New Romney when war was declared. I remember we had a large Anderson shelter in the back garden. I left Primary School in 1940 and started work on the farm. I was not called up and left after about a year and started work for Basil Prior, who also had a farm in St. Mary’s Road. He lived in Walner Croft, in Walner Lane at the time and one of my first jobs was to chop wood for the household and also to collect the eggs from the chickens.
My usual job was a tractor driver and I recall we had to keep our eyes open for the German fighter planes that came across the fields very low. On numerous occasions they were so low I could see the pilots in the cockpit and we used to shelter under a trailer out of sight. Once, when working along the Old Romney Road, a German plane came down in the next field but I never did know if the pilot was badly hurt.
I remember one Sunday morning standing in the back garden with my brothers and seeing a dogfight overhead. One of our aircraft got shot down and the pilot baled out and landed next to us in a ditch. Most of his clothes were burnt but he survived. The plane crashed along Hope Lane, close to The Seeds farmhouse. We had to be careful when working on the land as some of Basil’s fields were mined, as was the field between the Plough and the Warren on the main road. There were some ack-ack guns in the field alongside my father’s farm and many of the fields had tall poles in them to prevent the German planes from landing. I remember the first night when the doodle-bugs came over. I was standing outside the Cinque Ports in New Romney and wondered what on earth they were?
Leaving school there wasn’t much to do in my spare time and my father bought me a bike from Hartops in the High Street and I used to cycle into New Romney most evenings. During the winter when it was dark, I had a candle in a jam jar for a light on my bicycle! We were sometimes stopped at the end of the road by the Plough as there was a sentry post there and we had to tell the guards who we were and where we were going. We all had ration books and food coupons and used to buy our groceries from the Corner Stores and also Clark’s Stores in the High Street. I was very friendly with Sid Flisher and his Grandad was the landlord of the Cinque Ports at the time and we used to meet in the cellar where the beer barrels were kept. We were not old enough to go into the bar!
I played football for the ‘Romney Busters’, on the land where Churchlands is today, and we used to play against the Army and Airforce lads who were stationed locally. Towards the end of the war, we were also allowed to play on part of Southlands playing fields that were not mined. I remember playing against the Army ‘A’ and ‘B’ teams and one of their goalkeepers was Dennis Gunning. When the war was over, he stayed in the town and married Jean Flisher, Sid’s sister, and they took over the Cinque Ports from her Grandad.
I also enjoyed Goal Running and was a member of the New Romney team in the late 1940s (see photo). Other players included Bill Souten, Ken Snoad, Bob Bark, Jack Wall, Sid Ashdown, Harold Paine, Charlie Ralph, Jin Butchers, Joe Masters, Ernie Clifton, Harold Kertland, Don Ashdown, Doug Gillham, Bill Gillham, Bert Paine, Chris Barnes and Peter Imbert . . . Bert Tyrrell.
I was living in St. John’s Road, New Romney but cannot remember too much about the early part of the war. But I do recall the Flying Fortress coming down at Littlestone. I remember going down to see it and taking home some brown ‘Perspex’ type material that was used for the cockpit windows. My father made it into table mats and we had them for many, many years. I can also remember Carey’s buses being kept in a yard the other end of St. John’s Road. The Army had a cookhouse there in a couple of Nissen Huts and we used to have a very nice Sunday lunch with them!
I remember that once when the Doodlebugs were flying over, I was hit by a small piece of shrapnel. Because of the food rationing, I recall getting up very early in the morning and going down to Dungeness looking for Seagull eggs. Because of my father’s occupation, we could travel through the sentry post in the Avenue without any trouble. My mother used to pickle the eggs in ‘water-glass’ and they were very tasty . . . Billy Ellis.