THE VILLAGE AT WAR
THINGS START TO CHANGE
By the middle of 1943 changes were starting to happen in the quiet village.
The ladies of the duty watch WRNS (Womens Royal Navy Service) were quartered in South Lodge, alongside the Golden Lion. Their sleeping quarters were erected in the gardens resulting in a single storey, pre-fab like building still in existence and known, rather grandly, as the
Manor Hall.
Wrens from HMS Dryad were also billeted in a separate cottage in the village, and guarded by a Royal Marine sergeant carrying a rifle. This was because they were typing all the naval orders for D-Day and it was feared they could talk in their sleep. The marine had orders to shoot the girls if there was an enemy parachute raid on the HQ, in case they fell into enemy hands! (“Hampshire at War”, by Patricia Ross, published by The Kings England Press, 2013)
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SHELTERS ERECTED
Shelters were erected in the field beside the old Dower House, known as The Elms, and situated in West Street.
Their purpose was to temporarily house the schoolchildren during 1943, on those occasions when the School was commandeered by the Army for Staff planning The Elms, West Street meetings.
Once Southwick House had been sufficiently altered to cater for most eventualities, these shelters were appropriated to provide even more WRNS’ quarters.
The former School, Southwick
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INCREASED TRADE FOR THE PUBS!
While momentous changes were happening at the big house, village life remained remarkably unaffected. At first, the locations at which the greatest impact was apparent were the two village pubs, the “Red” and the “Golden” Lions, where the increase in trade from service The Red Lion personnel was extremely welcome!
NAAFI SHOP SET UP! A NAAFI shop was set up in No. 56 High Street, one of the terrace of houses. The shop was in the care and control of a Lt. Pugh.
Apart from the Red Lion only being a beer house at this time, a further disadvantage, shared with almost every other pub in the Kingdom during the war, was the rationing restrictions which caused shortfalls in supplies.
BREWERY BONUS!
The Golden Lion, however,
The Golden Lion with its own brewery, did not suffer from these problems!
“THE LOCALS WERE WONDERFUL PEOPLE” A wartime ‘Wren’ based at Fort Southwick during the build-up to D-Day recalls: “We had many happy times at social gatherings at the Golden Lion, Southwick. Where the front bar, known as the ‘Blue Room’, had been officially adopted as an ‘Officer’s Mess’. The locals were wonderful people and always very polite. They went about their daily business as though we weren’t there.”*
*(From O’Connell’s book, a quote from Patricia Blandford’s dissertation ‘Fort Southwick What Useful Purpose Did It Serve’.)
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THE HAMPSHIRE COUNTY PIE SCHEME!
Extract about the Pie Scheme from Southern On the 4th June 1943, the villagers of Daily Echo 24 June 2009 - Southwick and Boarhunt joined the http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/heritage/hampshirehe ritage/4457109.How_the_humble_pie_helped_win “Hampshire County Pie Scheme”! _war/
MAINTAINING MORALE
Following the long-standing principle “an army marches on its stomach”, the authorities decided that pies would be the answer to the problem of maintaining civilian morale across the country.
For most of the Second World War and the following eight years up to 1953, thousands of pies were made each week and then sold to the public as cheap, nutritious food.
People living in the heart of the Hampshire countryside, away from the main centres of population where, despite the wartime shortages shoppers could find a wider choice of food, especially welcomed the regular appearance of pies.
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PIE BUREAUCRACY!
The numbers of pies sold each week had to be meticulously recorded and a monthly return made to the County HQ at The Castle Winchester.
A significant amount of correspondence was needed, and survives, showing the management of the scheme which continued after the end of the war.
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RATIONING AND RECYCLING!
Less than a third of the food available in Britain at the start of the war was produced at home. Enemy ships targeted incoming Allied merchant vessels, preventing vital supplies - including fruit, sugar, cereals and meat - from reaching the UK. Because of this, and to ensure fair distribution of supplies, the Ministry of Food issued ration books to every person, and families had to register at one shop.
Information on rationing from www.bbc.co.uk/history
INDIVIDUAL RATIONS
Official rationing began on 8 January 1940 with bacon, butter and sugar. Rations were distributed by weight, monetary value or points.
One person's typical weekly allowance would be: one fresh egg; 4oz margarine and bacon (about four rashers); 2oz butter and tea; 1oz cheese; and 8oz sugar.
Meat was allocated by price, so cheaper cuts became popular. Points could be pooled or saved to buy pulses, cereals, tinned goods, dried fruit, biscuits and jam
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A HEALTHIER NATION DIGS FOR VICTORY
The pioneering Ministry of Food's Dig For Victory campaign encouraged self- sufficiency, and allotment numbers rose from 815,000 to 1.4 million.
Pigs, chickens and rabbits were reared domestically for meat, whilst vegetables were grown anywhere that could be cultivated. By 1940 wasting food was a criminal offence.
SUGAR SHORTAGE As sugar was in short supply, sweets were rationed from July 1942 to February 1953. An attempt to de-ration them in 1949 lasted just four months, as demand far outstripped supply.
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PETROL
From September 1939, petrol was only available for business or essential purposes.
FURNITURE AND CLOTHING
Furniture and clothing became utilitarian: pleats and turn-ups disappeared from trousers and garments were plain. Women painted gravy browning on bare legs as a replacement for silk stockings.
SALVAGE FOR RECYCLING AND MELTING DOWN
The Nation engaged in an orgy of assembling and collecting salvage for recycling and melting down as machines and weapons of war.
Kitchen waste could be fed to hens and pigs.
People were asked to salvage as many materials as they could. Wastepaper, metal or bones could be made into planes and ammunition.
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THE VILLAGE BATTLES ON 1943-44
It became difficult to travel the lanes in and around Southwick village without bumping into khaki-clad men charging about!
FORT SOUTHWICK
Initially, Fort Southwick was appropriated as the HQ for Admiral Sir Charles Little, Commander in Chief, Portsmouth Command, in 1942. A new military road was laid down as early as January 1941. A newspaper photograph shows the Hampshire Agricultural Committee ploughing Portsdown Hill ‘to cultivate a barley crop’. A number of alterations to the Fort were necessary to create a Naval wireless transmission (WT) room. bombproof, comprehensive Naval The WREN on the left is operating an Operation Control Centre with RCA AR88 communications receiver. associated communications capability. These were obtained under the lend-lease The underground workings were agreement with the USA. They operated excavated by Welsh and Belgian on a frequency range of 535KHz - 32MHz miners of the Pioneer Corps. The Fort and weighed 100 pounds. became the Combined Underground Photo interpretation by Ron Cuthbertson Operations HQ (or UGHQ) for (http://www.portsdown-tunnels.org.uk/) Operation OVERLORD in 1944.
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EXCELLENT TREE COVER
In January 1944 Southwick Mansion was finally chosen as the HQ for Operation OVERLORD due to its availability, ease of communications, location and space, and not least, because of its excellent extensive tree cover.
Once Southwick House was selected, then a frantic escalation of the construction programme was put in hand.
The Mansion’s front entrance was through a High Street pair of gates straddled by Church Lodge and the Church. Despite this, the Navy adopted Drove Road and Drove Lodge as their entrance, and the Lodge became the main guardhouse. A major advantage was that this route passed by the Golden Lion!
EISENHOWER’S TRAILER HOME
The Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower, parked his huge ‘trailer home’ alongside Pitymoor Lane, close to Pinsley Lodge. Until comparatively recently the hardpad of concrete was still evident.
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UNDER CANVAS IN SOUTHWICK PARK WOODS
General Montgomery (in his famous caravan), and an HQ staff of 20 officers and 200 men were billeted in mobile homes and under canvas in Southwick Park grounds, as were the HQ of the 21st Army Command.
‘Monty’ was also resident and holding court at Broomfield House. Here he entertained a number of eminent visitors to dinner in the lead up to the invasion. Guests included King George VI, Prime Minister Churchill, General Smuts of South Africa, as well as Dominion Premiers and Colonial luminaries.
It appears General Montgomery was keen to take bets proffered in the general run of after dinner conversation such as when the war would end, who would get to which war objective first or which While he may have liked a bet, political party would win the post-war election. Then Monty pulled out the Monty neither drank alcohol or betting book and recorded the matter! smoked.
‘SHOOTING UP’ THE CEDAR TREE!
Only a few years ago, a venerable cedar tree was taken down at Broomfield House. The forester experienced a problem with his saw, as if the cutting edge was striking metal. Once the tree was felled, it could be seen that the outer rings were peppered with bullets, which turned out to be machine gun slugs. It is rumoured that, after particularly lively meals, ‘Monty’ and ‘Ike’ were inclined to wander into the garden and ‘shoot-up’ the tree in question!
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SECURITY LEAK! As the tempo increased and D-Day approached, the “SAW MONTY Mansion was cordoned off. The only reported local TODAY!” leak in security was perpetuated by the wife of a naval petty officer, living close by the village shop, who wrote to her husband to say she ‘saw Monty today’. The censor spotted this breach of regulations and the lady was severely reprimanded!
HOARD OF GOLD FOUND!
Daily staff conferences were held in the old library of the Mansion, which had become the south dining room. It is rumoured, whilst the security of the room was being checked out, that a hoard of gold pieces, dating back to the early 1800s was found on top of one of the library bookcases!
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THE DATE IS CHOSEN The day on which to launch Operation OVERLORD was determined by when the states of tide and sunrise were at their best for the project. The June ‘windows’ were the 5th to 7th and 18th to 20th, with the early slot being the most propitious choice – as there would be a full moon.
The weather was also an obvious consideration as it could critically affect the sea state and thus the operation of the landing craft, the mine sweepers, channel markers, cable layers, as well as the ammunition, fuel and salvage ships.
As we now know, 6th June 1944, was the day!
In order to bring about the invasion, the BUILD UP TO D-DAY build-up of men and machines gathered INTENSIFIES pace, taking on a momentum of its own making. … Almost all the shady lanes, fields, copses and woods of the countryside surrounding Southwick were stacked high with the camps of men and their equipment, as well as lorry and tank marshalling points and dumps of armoury. Very busy local army locations were Creech Woods, straddling Place Wood road, the Southwick to Denmead thoroughfare, and the various farmsteads scattered around its edges, such as Upper Beckford, Lower Beckford and Creech Farms.
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MORE OF THE WREN’S ACCOUNT
“By the first day in June, men were sitting in convoys of parked vehicles – some sprawled in groups on the grass playing cards. Others were writing letters, presumably to their loved ones. They all seemed in very good spirits and would wave as we drove past.”
Paper money was issued to all the invasion troops as part of their standard fighting kit.
As the tanks poured through Southwick Village, en route to their loading destinations, Bertram Crook and his wife Violet, who were landlord and landlady of the Red Lion Pub, passed up as many bottles of beer and packets of cigarettes as they could lay their hands on. In return, they and some of their children, were given some of this currency as a token of the troops’ thanks! It could be no more, as it certainly was not legal tender in the UK.
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Most commentators were to record, once the troops, machines and ships had left for France, that the lanes and roads, the copses, woods and fields, the villages, “once the troops had towns and cities, the ports and harbours and the waters of the Solent were all eerily quiet and deserted. left … the villages … The most tangible reminders of their presence were were all eerily quiet the chalked “Thank You’s”. These had been left and deserted …” behind by the crews of the vehicles to the local populace who had helped to make their enforced stopover the more bearable!
It was only a matter of days before returning ships were to be disembarking human cargos of Allied casualties and It was only a German prisoners of war. matter of days before returning The captives who were wounded were transported to a primitive POW camp of Nissen huts inside the grounds of ships were to be Queen Alexandra Hospital. The healthy POW’s were disembarking disembarked at the Hardway, just to the north of Gosport, human cargos …. and marked along the narrow, pinched streets, lined with terraced houses, to nearby Forton Barracks. Axis prisoners shipped to Southampton were placed in camps beside the Western Esplanade and the dock areas. Southwick played its part, hosting these ‘guests’ at the Creech Woods Army base.
06 Page 16 of 17 A VILLAGER’S MEMORIES
I was born at the Dairy in Southwick Park in 1933. My grandparents Emily and Edward Painter ran the dairy for Col. Evelyn Thistlethwayte as a home farm for the Big House, producing eggs, butter, chicken, cream, bacon and pork. My mother, Ivy, made the butter twice a week from the herd of Guernsey cows she used to help milk by hand.
So we were in the midst of D-Day action without really knowing it.
There was a small landing strip out in the Park where I spent a lot of my time with Cpl. Charlie Connolly in a tent under a clump of trees, where he booked the light aircraft in. I had to hide under his bunk when any big wigs landed. He was an excellent flute player. I don’t think he survived in France, I only had one letter from him.
My Grandma often had 20 or more to tea on Sundays, some from the army and a few from the navy. They all became good friends. They came for a wash and shave in the sink outside in the mornings. She always had a copper of hot water going.
One morning I went with my Grandfather to collect the men’s wages from the Estate Office which was down by the Priory Ruins at the time. As we went to go back to the Dairy, an army sergeant threw a rifle across his chest and said “You can’t go through”. My Grandfather said “If I was a younger man I’d hit you over the bloody head with my walking stick”. He said “OK Pop, go on through then”. Glancing to our right leaning on a gate, down by the weir, were Winston Churchill, Monty, General Eisenhower, Admiral Ramsey and Leigh Mallory. Probably discussing D-Day plans.
The night training over the lake was something else. No one got much sleep in Southwick. They used live ammunition and thunder flashes, collecting cartridge cases became a childhood hobby. The family were also friendly with a Sgt. Bill Marchant. He was in charge of the big long-range gun, that big I could have climbed down the barrel. It was never fired of course, it would probably have reached France.
Finally, when D-Day came, the Park was full of queuing traffic, as all the south coast was. I did very well for chewing gum and chocolate from the Americans.
The following day the Park was like a western ghost town. It took us some time to get over losing all our friends all at once.
To all those that lost their lives we must be eternally grateful, this was a very just war. God Bless Them All.
Alan Crook.
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