Bill’s war tales come out of the deep freeze

10:20am Wednesday 10th February 2010

By Richard Garfield

THE RECENT big freeze meant a lot of people in the Basingstoke area were stuck indoors – but while some were left twiddling their thumbs, the cold snap fired Bill Johnson into action.

The snow chaos gave Bill, who is registered blind, time to pause for thought, and the enforced confinement prompted him to write down some of his childhood memories of wartime Bramley.

The former poacher turned gamekeeper and JP said he had the time of his life during the Second World War.

Despite living in the relatively quiet Hampshire village, near Basingstoke, no one could escape the war. The 78-year-old, who during his childhood was known as Davies, said: “On the south side of the village, there was a large ammunition depot along with a camp for the Pioneer Corps and ATS.

“North of the village, the Americans turned Aldermaston into a large aerodrome for flying fortresses. We were surrounded by ack-ack guns and searchlights. All the woods of the Duke of Wellington’s estate, and other large copses were turned into ammunition dumps.”

Bill’s home, in Sherfield Road, called The Knot – named after his father’s regimental cap badge, the Staffordshire knot – was a focal point in the village. “Most nights, there was dancing in the lounge to a wind-up gramophone, with soldiers, American GIs and Home Guard all joining in.

“The attraction may have been my twin sisters, Betty and Clare, who were known in the village as the terrible twins,” joked Bill. Bill remembers lying in bed and listening to ammunition trains coming and going, and the Home Guard arriving at the house to find flasks of tea and cakes left in the porch by his mother.

“We never went short of things like butter, jam, tins of spam and sweets for me, all brought over by the GIs,” said Bill. “When an American would come up to use the loo, they’d say, ‘hello there boy, here you are,’ and I’d get bars of chocolate, spearmints and packs of nuts and raisins.” There were also other visitors to the house.

“The ATS girls brought mums and dads from London to lodge with us to get away from the bombing. At the time, we thought of them as being very strange, partly because of the way they talked – such as calling dogs Jerry Hogs,” said Bill, who has a soft Hampshire burr.

“They lived and worked on the farm next to the school – you’d go through the farm to get to the school,” said Bill, who now lives in Basingstoke.

“There was no animosity for the Italians in the village and they were trusted because they didn’t want to fight any more.

“They worked with the land Army Girls, so of course some of them married the girls, and some still live in the village today.

“We got on well with them, but we couldn’t make out why they’d shoot blackbirds and sparrows, which they’d eat.”

For Bill’s family and many others, rabbit was a readily available source of meat.

“I did a bit of poaching,” admitted Bill, who in later years was to become a gamekeeper for local showjumping British champion Fred Welch, at Ellis Farm, in Wildmoor, Sherfield-on-Loddon.

“My father was a policeman at the Army depot and he’d set snares at night when he walked around. And in the morning I was up catching the rabbits in the snares.

“During the war everybody ate them, even for Christmas dinner. I can remember for two years running seeing three rabbits in the roasting tray on Christmas Day.” With Bramley’s children no longer being sent to Fairfields School, in Basingstoke, the village school was too much for the head teacher Miss Henderson to manage, and so Bill left school when he was 13.

“She couldn’t teach us all and so I ended up doing the gardening for her,” said Bill.

Although the army depot and the aerodrome at Aldermaston were not bombed by the Germans, sometimes the villagers still saw the perils, and tragic side, of war at close quarters. “I was delivering newspapers one night when I saw this Flying Fortress flying round and round,” said Bill. “The airmen were bailing out and the plane came down and crashed right into the Silchester Roman ruins. I biked up there as soon as I could.”

He said people went to the scene to try and help, but there was nothing they could do. “I saw three bail out but from what I could gather, the rest of the crew died.”

Another incident involved a Spitfire. “Late one afternoon, we heard all this noise and it came flying over and circled round and crashed in a field at Stratfield Saye,” said Bill, who also remembers seeing a Blenheim Bomber explode, crashing down on Bramley Corner and Latchmere. Another tragedy that sticks in Bill’s mind was when three ATS girls, returning from a night out in Basingstoke, got run over by a goods train at the crossing at Bramley railway station.

On a happier note, the days leading up to D-Day were a time of some excitement. “The road from the army camp to the station was lined with soldiers waiting to join the troop trains,” said Bill. “We kids fetched them fags and items from the village shop, although there wasn’t a lot the shop could sell, because of the war.

“The magazine they all wanted to buy was the Picturegoer, which was all about the movie stars – that was a fabulous magazine.” And even though there was a war on, there was still time to enjoy the lighter side of life.

Bill recalled that women in the village turned the village hall into a canteen, which opened every evening.

“It was known as the Silver Slipper,” said Bill, who also remembers the YMCA hut behind the Methodist Chapel.

“In this hut, my mother organised concert shows. PC Hill was a singer and Harold Cummings a singer with a lady’s voice, while Chick Reeves had a hair and shaving act, and my father was a comedian.”