麻豆官网首页入口

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Bridie Wright of Wakefield Libraries and Information Services on behalf of David Michael Butterfield and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
We lived at 350, Horbury Road in a semi-detached house. My father was an insurance agent for the Co-op. The 20 acre field behind our house (now new houses built on the site) sloped upwards to Snapethorpe School where I did all my schooling. The field was part of Whitaker's farm, which you reached from a lane farther down. He brought the milk round in a cart with a pony called Pablo. The milk was in churns, and was measured out by special ladles into your jug. Later when I was older I would help hold the pony while he did the deliveries.
Our neighbour, called Crowther, was an older insurance agent for another company, and a vegetarian. He kept budgies and three Bantam hens, from which he would pass an egg over for me. He also got a ration of dried bananas, some of which I also had.

Dad enlisted in July 1940 and was stationed at York as a clerk, so we went into digs there for a time, living on a side street near the river and the railway line. In the back garden there was a semi-sunk Anderson shelter covered in soil, and the field behind, at a lower level, went down to the river. At the opposite end was a girls' school - this was their hockey field which often flooded from the river. Across the river was the station and marshalling yards, so we got a few bombing raids. Mum and I came back to Wakefield for safety.
Later Dad was remustered into the RECCE Regiment and went to Italy in 1944 arriving at Foggia and finishing at Trieste. We had some well-known neighbours, Hancock's Painters, Burrows Garage at the end of Ings Road and Thornes Lane (where the builders' supply is now), and Frank Harris Tyres. Stables Farm and Dennis Parkinson was across the road where a new housing estate now stands.
During the war tanks were made at Charles Roberts' and would come up as far as the Lupset Hotel on trial runs, with us lads chasing after. Also opposite the Lupset Hotel, by the post box, was a wooden hut where you tried your gas masks on.
The hill, which ran down from us to the stream, which is the boundary to Horbury, is called Dyehouse Hill with Sutcliffe's on the Horbury side, but on the Wakefield side a demolished building with just a cellar, and another house used as a barn by Frank Wild for his two cart horses. We used the cellar as a den and sledged down the field in winter. All of this is now gone under the motorway.
It was very rare we went into Wakefield; we did all our shopping ath the Co-op in Horbury, and veggies at Earnshaw's. Everything then was cut or ladled out, weighed and put into paper bags. No pre-packed rubbish.
After we came back from York, when the air raid sirens sounded, we would get under the big stone slab in the pantry, a bit daft now looking back, since we would have been squashed or blown up by the gas meter which was also there.
On Saturday morning we would walk to Lupset Bar Post Office, Lunn's - opposite Empire Stores - for a loaf of bread. Then, after dinner, we'd go again with my sweet ration coupons to Gethings at Whinney Moor and into the Savoy for the Saturday afternoon matinee - Lassie or Batman.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.