Exclusive: David Geoffrey Bickers – “The Home Front”

Through the Eyes of a Child “The Way We Were WW2”

(Interviewed and written by Leah Summers, his grand daughter for a school project)

“Have you ever wondered what it is like to be in an air raid? The silent doodle bugs and the bombs dropping. Have you ever wondered what it was like not to be able to go to the shop and buy some sweets?

Everything counted out to the last pinch. Well now you can find out in this special edition of “The Way We Were, WW2 Exclusive”. You will find out what it was like to be in an air raid and what it was like not to munch on a couple of your favourite sweets. All you have to do, is read on….

Q. Hello, before we begin, what is your name?.
A. My Name is David Geoffrey Bickers.

Q. How old were you during the war?
A. When the war started, I was 1 year old and by the time the war was over I was 6 years old.

Q. Where did you live during the war?
A. I lived in a cottage in a village called Coddenham. I am not sure what the house was called then, but now it is called “Wheelwrights Cottage”. Since I was born I have never lived out of Coddenham and I still live there today.

Q. What do you remember about the following:-
Air Raids?
A.     I remember we used to sit underneath an 8 ft square table with wire netting all the way around the outside so as not to let the rubble fall in if we were hit by a bomb. I used to remember hearing the doodle bugs suddenly dropping and the loud noise they made. My most vivid memory was when a German bomber plane went down at Shrubland Park sawmill. Because the plane was on fire the bullets were firing long into the night.

Q. Rationing?
A. I remember when I first had a banana, everyone said that they were delicious, but when I tasted mine I thought it was disgusting and I cried. We were also given chocolate powder at school, which was usually the closest to sweets that we got. Because we lived in the country we didn’t have powdered egg, but we preserved our eggs in a bucket of brine (salty water).

Q. Evacuation?
A.I don’t remember much about evacuation, but I do remember a lot of Italian* or Polish people came to live or stay in the village.

Q. The Home Guard?
A. All I know about the Home Guard was that my father was in it. He owned a garage which could be used to make repairs to vehicles and to buy petrol and fuel from.

Q. Black Market?
A. As I was quite young I didn’t get involved in the black market. I do know that my father had shares in an illegal pig. After it had been fattened it was killed and was shared out between all the people, according to how many shares they had.

Q. Newspapers and Radio Programmes?
A. As I had only just started school when the war ended, I couldn’t read, but we used to listen to the radio. I remember one night when Hitler or Lord Haw Haw was on the radio, I got a flare gun and fired an empty cartridge at the radio. I got a good telling off and sent to bed!

Q. Have you any other memories of the war?
A. I remember the Americans used to have a big 60 ft pit in the middle of the village (The Currant Pit), where they used to dump all of their rubbish. Me and my friends used to go and salvage crates of fruit. These crates usually had one bad bit in, but the rest was perfectly edible. We also used to find big 6inch cartridges which had not been used and we used to take the gunpowder out and make them bang. It’s a miracle I’m alive today.”

David’s Aunt Margaret, who drove one of the buses during the war, recalled how much he enjoyed sitting on the little wooden seat besides the driver. He himself had a vivid memory of sitting in the cab of a lorry going to deliver hardcore to make runways for the new airfield at Debach. It must have been 1942 or 1943, when the Americans were constructing the new heavy bomber stations. Much of this hardcore was the rubble from bombed out London, which came daily to Ipswich by train.