CD2

(55 mins)
 

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RESERVED OCCUPATION / HOME GUARD / SPECIAL CONSTABLE

[change of summariser]

[Going back to the beginning of the war, when he was married, living in the council house in Wootton Courtenay and working for Billy Burnell] At the very beginning of the war he was thinking he'd like to join the airforce. The schoolmaster used to live in Wootton Courtenay and was the head schoolmaster of Minehead grammar school, C G Gibbs, was interested in the airforce and got him a medical. But he couldn't go because Billy Burnell had just made him reserved occupation, as No 1 driver for the Home Guard transport. At that time he was a special constable in the police, who were going to second him to the airforce, but Billy Burnell said he couldn't as he'd made him reserved occupation.

And he had, he'd got the Home Guard contract. DP was made the No 1 driver. He'd got a Sten gun down beside him, a driver's badge, and he was out the whole time. He was out some nights all night, out Dunster rifle range, [they'd] take over a wood or something like that. For instance he would have to go and pick up the Roadwater gang and take them to a place in Blue Anchor because somebody was going to attack Blue Anchor. He had to take them round the district, Sundays, nights. The biggest job, going to Luxborough, going to Wheddon Cross, picking up different gangs, nightly. Perhaps Wheddon Cross one night, Luxborough another night, and take them to the top of Porlock Hill, where they were 2 hours on, 2 hours off, guarding the road from Minehead to Lynmouth. He would have to pick up these Home Guard, take them to the top of Porlock Hill, with the bus. He wasn't allowed to leave the top of Porlock Hill. He had to put the bus in the wood and stay in the bus all night, sleep in the bus in case he had to take the men somewhere, and bring them back the next morning. They would go and do their different jobs on the farms and he would go and do his school contract. So he was on all the time, Home Guard and various things, with these buses.

[BJ asks what the people he was taking about would have been doing] First of all they had to learn how to use a rifle. There was rifle practice. Then he would take them to the top of Porlock Hill to look after that. He would take them to Blue Anchor. He wouldn't be told what was going to happen, but he had to take them somewhere and they would have to take over a certain place because another part of the Home Guard was going to attack them. Well, all that meant taking them from different places to different places all the time, Sundays, Saturdays, and he never got a penny overtime. He wasn't paid by anybody. The only time he got anything was when he was in the police, he got 18 pence, that's 1/6d a week, for boot money. Boot money, for plodding.

He was a special constable before the war started. [BJ asks if he worked with Arthur Webber, from Wheddon Cross - fellow contributor to the archive - who was also a special constable, and in the Home Guard] He can't remember Arthur Webber, but he used to have to go to Wheddon Cross to pick up a gang of Webbers with the Home Guard. [Back to top]
 

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WAR YEARS / NORTH HILL / CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS / DRIVING LORRIES

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He was living in the council house at Wootton Courtenay when war was declared. Yes, he remembers war being declared. Because they were greatly involved with lorries and drivers. They had to immediately stop work and send them to Tone [breaks off] Right away, 2 of their drivers went to Norton Camp, just before the Cross Keys on the Taunton road. At Cross Keys, there's a huge industrial place, built at the beginning of the war, called the ordnance depot for the army. Some of their lorries helped build it. Another thing was that, after they got it built everything had to be brought from Taunton station and put in this ordnance depot place. Bags of sugar, crates of tea. He went up there once or twice with a lorry to unload and take into the ordnance camp, which was the ordnance camp for the West, he thinks.

So that's dealt with the beginning of the war. All through the war, the tanks were brought down to Minehead station, by rail, on big rail trucks. Big tanks, big Churchill tanks, were driven off the ramp and taken up to Minehead North Hill, where they tore the roads all to pieces. You know, iron tracks on an caterpillar, and being heavy as well. All the corners up round [indistinct] in Minehead, were torn up, rough roads. So the roads had to be rebuilt from Minehead station to the top of North Hill, where there were 3 tank places where they used to train. They'd bring these tanks down, and shoot from the top of North Hill out over the channel, on targets. Well these places had to be built, one, two, three, on the top of North Hill. And they were mixed up in that.

He was mixed up in it as well because they used to have to take workmen, go round and pick up the conscientious objectors, during the war, and take them to places of work. North Hill was one, where they were preparing target places, where a, b and c tank places had to be built. He'd pick them up from various places, like Carhampton. Drive the bus around, 6 o'clock in the morning, pick up the conscientious objectors, up through Minehead, take them to North Hill, and the wind would be blowing, their hats would be taking off, where they had to make roads.

[BJ asks how people treated the conscientious objectors] They were all right. They were just ordinary persons. It was a government thing and they had to do it, so that was all right. Then there was Puritan, Bridgwater. That was built as an ammunition [tails off] at the beginning of the war. Well, he took men there to work. Picked them up Minehead, Watchet, Bridgwater, and out to Puritan, where they had to work all day and he'd pick them up and bring them home at night. There was buses and lorries involved all through the war. [Back to top]
 

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HOME GUARD EXERCISES / PORLOCK HILL / IRON PITS / FAMILY

Now, what else did they have to do? [thinks]. The top of Porlock Hill was the worst one. You had to stay there all night and bring them back. You had to sleep in the bus, and be prepared to rush anywhere or do anything if anything went wrong. He remembers one particular night up there. The 2 men on guard, stopping anyone going through, from Minehead to Lynton, it was their place to ask what they were doing. It was nothing to do with him, he was in the bus, in the wood. They used to have a little hut, far beyond him, with some binder cord coming from the hut, and a bell, going through the trees out into the road where they were on guard. So if they got any nuisance or anybody out in the road, they used to ring this bell. One night, the bell rang, and he heard it. What had happened was that there was 2 girls, on bicycles. And they had to stop them, whoever it was. And one said to the other, 'What shall us do, shall us let 'em go?', and he said, 'Oh, I'd let 'em go.' So they let them go, and all was quiet. The bell would have been rung by the men out in the road.

He must tell BJ a story about the Home Guard. It's comic, rather than personal. The Home Guard had to guard these iron pits, great big pits which had been there for years. Some of them were filled up, some of them weren't. Nothing to do with the rubbish. Some of the pits were there, and they were nearly always full up with water. Their Wootton Courtenay Home Guard had to go up and guard them because they were going to be attacked from somebody else, during the night. So, there was an officer, 2 officers he thinks, called H P Ewart and D P Ewart, They were commanders of the Wootton Courtenay branch. So they had to guard these iron pits one night because some other Home Guards were going to attack the bottom of Dunkery. He thinks he got them, he doesn't know where from, Crowcombe or something like that.

So, this officer in charge of the iron pits had got his men up there, and they were walking around, and it was raining, and the pits were full of water. And the officer and his corporal, Slade, both fell in the same pit [tells story and laughs.

Yes, he had a gun, a Sten gun. But he didn't have any practice with that, he didn't have to go. They had to go on rifle ranges with the rifles, but he never went with his Sten gun.

[BJ asks what Wootton Courtenay was like in the war] Well, nothing really out of the ordinary. His children went to school there. He had 3 boys and a girl. Jack is the eldest, Pat, the girl, is second, Charlie is the third. He lives on this site [at Timberscombe, where recording is taking place]. The fourth son was rather late in life, 1945. His second wife, which is now, was a divorcee. His first wife died when she was 42, and he'd be the same age near enough. He married Bets in [thinks] 1953, and she has a daughter, called Carol. Carol was born about the same age as George, his youngest son. She's in Sizer's, in Minehead Radio in Friday Street. She's the manager in there. [Back to top]
 

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EVACUEES / PLANE CRASHES

The wife was a cook in Dunkery Hotel for 18 years. That's more or less where they got together and got married, out of there. He's gone through most of his life now, hasn't he?

[BJ asks whether they had evacuees in Wootton Courtenay] Yes. He can tell her a story about those. Of course there was a railway running from Taunton to Minehead in those days. He was the driver to go and meet the trains coming down from London with evacuees. This particular train he met, he had a load of children, with somebody in charge of each bunch, to know to drop them off, or who with. So he went in Dunster and picked up this load of evacuees. And he had to drop them off in Dunster, all the way out to Timberscombe and beyond. He dropped them all off and was going back to Dunster station again. Some of the poor devils were crying in the roads saying they wanted to go home, and this poor woman with them had to pacify them.

And some of them stayed, some did go back, in the end. And they had an evacuee or 2 in Wootton Courtenay. The woman Billy Burnell went off with was an evacuee. He went off with her in 1945.Yes, she was a grown up evacuee, well she was grown up at the time he took her away anyway.

[BJ asks about the other evacuees in Wootton Courtenay] Yes, there were evacuees, which he dropped at Gillams, between Wootton Courtenay and Porlock. They were called Arnwell [?sp], Sam Arnwell and his sister Queenie. They stayed with that woman at Gillams, and were married with her. They didn't live in Wootton Courtenay actually, they lived in Allerford, Porlock. He doesn't know very much about other evacuees.

[BJ asks about other war memories] Yes, he was aware of the aeroplanes going over. There was an air raid warning. They used to get air raid warnings, and they used to hear them from Minehead. At this particular time, Coventry was being bombed, and they used to walk to the top of the hill there and see the bombs being dropped [points through window] He's pointing to the top of the hill behind Wootton Courtenay, which is still called North Hill, though not Minehead North Hill. One particular night he heard a terrific wailing noise [imitates], like an air battle. So he got out of bed and looked out of the window. It came in over all on fire, and he could see our planes going around, and bullets being fired at him. And that plane, as true as he is [sitting] there, he ran into the other bedroom and looked out of the window and saw it crash. It came in a few yards above these roofs, though he wasn't [living] there then, and went straight into that valley, it wouldn't be more than 200 yards out of Timberscombe.

The next day, they came over to see the point of crash. It was terrible to see it. There were bodies, heads, hands, arms, in the trees, as it came down and crashed. Up in the trees there was bits of human bodies. Terrible it was really. But when he was being chased and caught, and the Spitfire and Hurricane was firing at it, the rear gunner got catapulted out, or he catapulted himself out, and he came down in a field at Rodhuish, with his parachute, all right. So he was scared, and everybody else was scared, so he started walking. And he walked down across this field and met the farm labourer, going to work at 7 o'clock in the morning. And this German was asking the farm labourer where the police station was so he could give himself up, so the farm labourer said, 'Oh, bugger off. I'm late for work already, I can't be buggered with you!' [laughs] [original story recounted by Cyril Wyburn, fellow contributor the archive]. He was all right.

But all the plane was a terrible mess up there in the wood. [BJ asks what they did, when they saw the plane] Nothing else but weep, really. They shouldn't have been there, really. It was a terrible crash.

Then there was another one. He was in Dunster station waiting for somebody. He thinks he had a bus then. And all at once, the same sort of thing, Spitfires, bang, bang, bang. And the bullets were falling down on the platform all around him. And he came down, they got him down on Bossington beach, and everything was killed there, like. There was another one on Bossington beach after that and the pilot, somehow or other, was saved. And he's buried in Porlock churchyard. And his parents or something to do with him come over every so often and put flowers on the grave. [BJ queries why the pilot, if he was saved, was buried in Porlock] Because he wanted to be buried there, or his parents wanted him to be buried there [unclear answer, the inference being that he was rescued, but then died].

The plane he saw at Timberscombe was picked up and taken away afterwards. He was all to pieces, because he had gone through the trees. He saw it go in, and disappear, and all the flames coming up everywhere. Terrible. Now, is there anything else? [Back to top]
 

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CHILDREN'S SCHOOLING / GARAGE LIFE / BILLY BURNELL / GARAGE NOW

His children went to school at Wootton Courtenay. It's an inhabited building now. The, over a certain age, they went to Dunster, taken by car, not a Burnells' bus. Mr Louis Bowden, who had the garage in Dunster, used to supply the car to pick them up in Wootton Courtenay and take them into Dunster. He knows this particular time, they got to school, Jack his son was involved in this, they were wet through when they got to school and told the school teacher that it was because Mr Bowden's roof leaked. In fact Mr Bowden's car  had a soft top and every now and again these tremendous boys would slit a hole in it, and let the water in.

He learnt to be an engineer from Billy Burnell. All the way up, from the gramophone, bicycle, motorcycle, car, lorry, buses, all the way up. The 32-seater bus was the biggest one. Then he had a licence to drive all single deck buses, he couldn't drive a double-decker.

He enjoyed his garage life more than his farm life. [pause] Yes, he supposes he did. He had his marriage in the first part of his garage life, and had the children. George Burnell and his sister were born about the same time. His father, Billy Burnell, was an engineer, because he learnt his business with some bus company in Minehead. Going back years ago this is. Because DP's 93, and Billy Burnell was 10 years older than him. No, he didn't come back. He died in South Africa. [pause] It was a rather funny thing. But as he's said, it was a personal part of his life. But George could have had a lovely business there and he's got nothing now. The house and the garage attached to it. And he's got all the room at the back. DP thinks he's got planning permission at the moment to build 3 bungalows there. So he's making his money on sales now, he supposes. Yes, that's in the orchard.

Another thing he used to do a lot of was long distance driving. This is again with Billy Burnell. He would take him to Taunton station at 2 o'clock in the morning, put him on a train to go to Dagenham to pick up a new Ford. DP asked if he really had to go that night and BB said he could sleep on the train. Sometimes it would be Birmingham, or Longbridge, or somewhere for a lorry. The buses were from Hendon and he used to have to take them back for painting sometimes, or body work. He used to drive them to London. He got to London once with a bus and wanted to go up the Edgware Road to get to Hendon. He remembers going in the Great West Road, dropping off the Great West Road into Hammersmith, going round and round the one way streets, until a policeman told him he'd been round 3 times already and directed him left into Edgware Road. [Back to top]
 

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CONTRACT WORK / DUNSTER GARAGE / PAUL GETTY / RETIREMENT

He did 10 years at the garage for George, he expects, to get him settled, and left between 1955 and '60. Then he was getting to retiring age. Now, he was on his own, tractors and implements, one thing and another, ploughing fields with tractors. And he had a combine, a bailer. He was several years on his own, and one day Louis Bowden, from Dunster, rang up and asked him if he wanted a job. He said he was thinking of giving up as every farmer in those days was beginning to get his own bailer, his own combine, and a digger and all the big hire stuff was going to cost him a lot of money. And he was getting towards retiring age and thought he couldn't afford to get all this big stuff and then lose it. Louis Bowden said he wanted somebody to manage the forecourt, that the job was his if he could manage it and he could have his office in the tyre bay. He knew what the job was, because he'd worked for him before. There were 4 petrol pumps, second hand car sales, and tyre fitting. So he took the job.

Then he came to retiring age while he was working there and Louis Bowden asked him if he could do half time, so he retired and did half time working at the Dunster garage until they went bankrupt. They went bankrupt in the end. That's another history he can't go back over very well. [sighs] There was Paul Getty, a millionaire. He bought 3 garages. He bought one in Taunton, the Tiverton Motor Company and the Luttrell Arms Garage. DP was still working there, part time. He had a lovely daughter (nothing at all to do with DP) and there was a man who wanted to marry her. So this Paul Getty man - this is a funny story mind - said to the man that he could marry his daughter and he would give him one of the garages. So in the end he gave him all 3 garages. And he married this daughter, and he left her. And that's where the bankruptcy comes in.

Williams he was called. He spent every bloody halfpenny of it. First of all, he sold Taunton, then he sold Tiverton, and then it came to them. And they were made bankrupt. No, Percy Bowden didn't own the garage, because it was bought by Paul Getty. This man that married his daughter used to go into the garage and say to DP, 'Fill up my car,' 'Wash my car,' and you daren't say anything because he was Paul Getty's son-in-law. So in the end, the son-in-law got rid of all the money, all the garages, and they were the last one to go bankrupt. They owed DP £300 and something he thinks [describes why]. The trustees notified him that they'd paid out all the big moneys but there was no money to pay him.

So that's how he retired. And even today, George Burnell, or somebody who knew DP very well because he'd done jobs for them, asks him now how to do a job, or could he help them. Well, he couldn't help them now, he can't stand about long enough. But he did, right up until he couldn't do it any more. [Back to top]
 

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DRIVING LICENCES / EXMOOR MOTOR CLUB / SCRAMBLING / FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE

He had 74 years' clean driving licence, which he's got in his pocket. GEM, that's General [thinks], something Motorist. He gave back his bus badge when he was 70. He became a founder member of the Exmoor Motor Club in 1976, reformed it, helped to reform it. He was No 4 on the people who got it together again. In 1946 they made it the Exmoor Motor Club, it was called the Exmoor and District Motor Club before that, in 1928, and he has a trophy which he won.

He was interested in that because of motorcycling. He was a scrambler and a trial rider. Then he became Exmoor Motor Club president, and then he had to go through scramble, clerks to the course, organise trials and go to see farmers and ask if he could use that road or lane. Or that hill, or that field, or that river. He used to go to Winsford a lot, Larcombe Foot, over the wooden bridge (where BJ lives). Then they used to have sections of trials all the way up there, and to the right. Then at Christmas he'd take the farmers round a bottle of whisky. He asks BJ if she was ever involved in that, or knew anything about that. BJ says, yes, she knew about the bottle of whisky.

Then he got heavily involved with the motor club. He had to organise a scramble course at Exford, which used to belong to Mr Sweetland, up behind the council houses. Then he sold that, or he died or something. The Mr Williams of Stone Farm [let them use] Stone Down. It had to be organised.

He and others checked out the routes. He got help. Then when Mr Williams sold, or died, somebody from Simonsbath bought Stone Farm and bought it as a cow husbandry farm. So they couldn't run their scramble on Stone Down. So he had to look for another place, and he went to Williton, a scramble course which belonged then to Mr Burden [?sp], Torweston. That came to an end because it was sold and the next one was at the top of Timberscombe Wood there. Captain Heathcote. What's the name of the farm, where they sell the raspberries? Allercott farm. He was the owner. Well, there were 2 owners there, Captain Heathcote, and the iron pits belonged to Allercott [check sense].

[BJ asks if farmers welcomed them onto their land and did the motorbikes make a mess] Yes, they were welcomed. No, they didn't make a mess. It was a proper course. They were roped in, where they had a quarry or a steep, or a field or a drop. They had to follow the course. Of course they didn't interfere with any cattle or sheep. They had to have a big insurance, on the day of the scramble the spectators and riders were insured and the cow or sheep in the field would be insured for the farmer. So it was a big insurance that covered the lot. No, then never had to use the insurance, thank God. Then they had to give the police information of where and what they were going to do.

He's still the president of the motor club. And only the other day the secretary rang up to ask what he should do; they'd been on to him about the foot and mouth disease. Whether they would be prepared to get somebody up on the outlying roads to spray the wheels. At the entrance to Dunkery, say Blagdon Cross, or any of the entrances onto the national park. This was any vehicle. If you were driving from Dunkery Gate going up over Dunkery to Luccombe or somewhere like that, they would be in the road to stop you to ask you to wait a moment while they sprayed the wheels, under the wings and all that. [asks BJ is she has seen them doing it on television] They asked them [the motor club] if they would supply a gang or 2 to go out on different places. The secretary was going to do it, but he doesn't think they have been called yet, because it was something to do with the National Park [Authority] and they hadn't given authority, or didn't want anybody to do it because the National Park men themselves were going to do it, up till then. But they asked if they [the motor club] could help, if they wanted help. DP said yes, and the secretary said if they wanted it he would go into it, and put it right. So that's that. [Back to top]
 

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MOVE TO TIMBERSCOMBE / BUYING COUNCIL HOUSE / DRIVING / FIRE AT ROYAL OAK, WINSFORD

[BJ asks when they moved from Wootton Courtenay] [thinks] They've been over here, in this bungalow, 8 years in March. So it's 8 years since they left Wootton Courtenay. The council man came to him one day in Wootton Courtenay and said he could buy his council house. He said they'd had 2 valuers who had said the house DP was living in was worth £19,950. That was, say, 10 years ago. The man said they could buy it for £9995, half the money. Because he'd been living in the same house for 47 years. He said he couldn't afford it, and the council man said they would help him. Now, the wife's daughter was living with them, in part of the house, and Carol, the daughter, who was married, said they'd think about it. If it hadn't been for him they wouldn't have got that house, because they hadn't been living in a council house long enough to buy it. So, the agreement was then that they, the 2 younger ones, would do all the mortgage and the council said they would look for a bungalow for DP and his wife. So that's how they moved to Timberscombe.

So Carol and her husband bought the house in Wootton Courtenay.

So that's how they moved out. Not because they had to, but it's much better, because it's a sheltered bungalow. And they are looked after. And over there they would have had to pay a mortgage or buy it. Well, they are living in Timberscombe more or less rent free, because they are, well, covered by, what shall he say, national [?social] security, he supposes really.

[BJ asks how it feels having left Wootton Courtenay] He cried his eyes out when he left. Sixty four years in the same house. He sat on the stairs and cried. And they had to come and get him out. But since that day they have looked after them [DP and his wife]. But again, he lost everything. He lost his motorbikes. He was very deeply into his motorbikes, and the motor club. He wasn't working then, but it was a great wrench. Then when he came there he decided to give up driving. He thought it was time to give it up because he had had a clean licence all his life and didn't want to go outside and somebody hit him, and be involved in an accident, so he didn't renew his licence. But the wife, she drives. She doesn't drive very much because she doesn't like the night driving, and long distance. If they want anything, she drives. But then he has a friend there in the village who is very good to them. They've got the car still and it is insured for anybody to drive it. He paid a lot of money for insurance here, you know. Another £47. But he's got to be over 25 if you want to do it. If they want to go to Tiverton, for his sister, or anywhere like that, he [the friend] will drive DP's car for them.

As a matter of fact he took them out last Saturday or Sunday, after the fire at Winsford, when the Royal Oak caught fire again. It was a nice day, so they went out to Winsford to have a look. Well, they got to Winsford and went to drive up past the Royal Oak. You could see it was ripped they'd sheeted down part of the thatch. And in the back yard were the carpets and bits of furniture and that. So they had a cup of tea and a rock cake in the restaurant there, opposite the garage (the Bridge tea rooms). The person there told them the fire had been caused by a spark in the chimney or something. But it happened a few years ago, didn't it, the same thing? [Back to top]