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Sheila Carver
My first memories of the war were of men coming to the farm all dressed in different uniforms. going off to war. Most of them had played with my two cousins George and Tom at the farm. One young man, Jackie Rutter, was his name, walked up Millers Lane with me hanging from his neck.
He was in the RAF and was killed in Holland. When you enter St. Marys Church, Whickham, in the porch is a small stained glass window that the Scouts put in his memory.
My grandparents had purchased a Ford V8 car in about 1936-37, but sadly had to sell it to Whickham Council to be used for Civil Emergency in the war years.
I remember the balloons on the cricket field. I used to be very frightened, I remember that one got away and my cousin told me that men were in them and they would come and take me away.
German prisoners came to work on the farms during the war. The camp was on Lord Gort's estate at Hamsterly Mill. The prisoners, Italian and German worked on local farms travelling daily by bus. My sister and I went with grandma and Mrs Clark to look around the prison camp. The coach driver took us there and we went to so many farms picking up, that the bus got full. My sister and I ended up sitting on two German's knees.
Two of my cousins went off to war and as they had made a fuss of me I missed them terribly, but suddenly the Germans came to work; one whose name was Helmut, came to East Farm. I found him like my cousins. We used to tease him, shouting:-
There will always be an England
And England shall be free
Because of our brave army
Air force and Navy".
He used to pretend to be mad and throw turnips at us.
His home was in Leipzig. When the war ended I have often wondered what happened to him as that was in the Russian Zone. He was not bothered about going back to Germany because all his family were killed during the war. When the war ended, he would come to the pictures at Blaydon, grandma always insisting that he sat beside us in case of any trouble.