Received the following letters from my new friend in England. She initially wrote to thank me for my music site and I asked for more info. Fascinating recollections. She gave me permission to share this with all of you.
July 9,2011
I love your WWII music! I was born in England in February 1944, and on the opposite side of the road to our farm there was a Prisoner of War camp... Germans, Italians and then at the wars end.. DP's. (Displaced Persons) lived there.
My Grandad grew tobacco in a greenhouse during the war and got pretty friendly with the pilots from the local airfield via the tobacco and the local pub, (Methwold, in Norfolk, England) and just before the airfield closed we .. my Grandad and I got a ride in a Lancaster (plane).
Now I live in Utah and a few years ago I traded a trip home to England for a ride in a B17, they had the plane at a local airfield.. Hinkley Field near Ogden, UT. It was wonderful... the experience of a lifetime. My admiration for those brave young men knows no bounds.
I remember these songs, know all the words, Grandad had several crystal radios.. my earliest memories are of my Grandad and I at the camp over the road listening to the radio and drinking potato beer the Germans made.. I was only a tot but dang that stuff was good!!!! They made me potato candy as well.
Do you sell CD's of your music? more than willing to pay whatever it costs!
Thank you so much for the site, it is wonderful. My father was a REME, Royal Electrical & Mechanical Engineers.
Elaine Miezejewski
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July 10, 2011
Hi Marion
...My husband and I are still WWII collectors, we are lucky to have a large house and have a bedroom as a war room... full of WWII items we have collected, from guns to medals from all over the world.
My dad was a great believer in war surplus, they sold it on the airfield runway by auction right after the war, we always had Willy's jeeps- I learned to drive in one and as soon as I was 17..driver age in the UK.. I got me one..you had to repaint it .. all I could find around the farm was BRIGHT YELLOW, my Jeep was known in the surrounding area as "The Yellow Peril" Guess I had a heavy right foot! Got several warning's from the local "Bobby's" but no tickets.
Our farm is in the fens and we used to plough out Bog Oaks.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7914029.stm
during the war we burnt them on the big old Aga.. a solid fuel stove with an attached oven. The bog oak wood was VERY dense and we had a huge circular saw that grandad used to saw it into lengths to burn... the saw was powered with a little water cooled engine, the whole thing shook and rattled. my job at about 21/2 years old was to watch the little engine and when it stopped throwing water all over the place I yelled at grandad and he would put more water in. There was no other fuel for ages, the first we could get was Coke, we had to take a truck to the rail station and load it ourselves.
My mother was so proud that she had got me a banana to take for my school lunch, I guess I was about 6 by then.. food was still rationed. Well I ate it.. was NOT impressed. Got home, mother asked how I liked my banana and not wanting to hurt her feelings I said it was lovely. She asked where I put the skin.. I had put it in the garbage can.. right? SKIN?? WHAT SKIN.... I ate the whole dang thing!!!!!!! Nobody told me to peel it, I had never seen one before.. neither had any of my friends at school.
At the beginning of the war the government formed the WarAg... Wartime Agriculture Committee. They had quota's you had to meet per acre or you had your land confiscated... you could get it back at the end of the war. As far as I know all the farmers made danged sure they met or exceeded the quota's. No-one wanted to lose their land.
Sugar was almost non-existant.. so as we grew sugar beet Grandma reckoned she could just boil it down on the Aga and make syrup.... Didn't work out quite the way she happily imagined. First off sugar beets are tough.. and you had to peel the suckers. She got grandad o do that with his hand crank grinder. Problem solved. She managed to get the beet chopped into bits and covered them with water. Second problem soon raised it real ugly head ... beets smell BAD when they cook... I mean BAD!!! This goop had to cook for hours .. according to grandma it stunk up the whole house for days. Apparently it made good sweetener for cakes etc.
I guess during the war you had to make do with unusual clothing items.. I think we all had clothes made from parachute material. Heaven only knows where grandad got it from, I understand it came via the local pub in trade for some fruit and vegetables.
Time I quit boring you ..
Regards, Elaine
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July 12, 2011
Hi Marion,
Please feel free to do what you wish with my e-mails! They are yours.
My grandad was my best friend.. but Lord knows he got me into trouble more than a little. He had a car but bought a motorcycle, a Vincent Rapide, just before the war and because of the petrol shortage would for the most part use the bike unless he was going on a long trip. The bike had a sidecar with a top on it, no idea if it was the original top but grandma would not lower herself to sit on the bike itself and she did not want to see what the heck grandad was doing speed wise.. Grandad had a real heavy right foot too and when grandma was in the side car she was too much of a lady to yell at him to slow down.. so she got real religious and prayed a lot. Grandad said he wasn't sure what she prayed for but it must have done some good as he never had an accident! I was allowed to ride in the sidecar if he went to the pub in the afternoons and took tomatoes and other veg to trade, I sat in the lounge, a closet sized room where the ladies sat to drink shandy. The ladies were very nice to me and gave me a drop of the stuff to drink.. geez but that stuff is nasty, it is half bitter lemonade and half beer...talk about pucker power. My grandad would pick up some iffy limerics there and if he had a couple of pints he would recite them on the way home. After the first and only time I told my mother I knew some poetry and regaled her with a few of grandads specials I learnt to keep such interesting things to myself. Grandad got a "talking to" and I got to sit and listen to the shipping forecast for a whole week!
When grandma was in the sidecar grandad had his orders. If a plane was spotted or heard ..no matter if it was British, American, German or Japanese he stopped the bike, he and grandma threw a green and brown painted sheet over the bike and they both jumped into the nearest ditch.. regardless of water, bugs, rats .. or any other nasties. Grandma always wore a pair of mens boots in case she had to hit a ditch and carried her good shoes with her.
Grandad spent a lot of time fixing the bike and as he couldn't get parts he had to use a lot of ingenuity, at one time sneaking sewing machine innards .. till mother found out and she threatened to go grocery shopping on the bike. Mother wanted to ride that bike real bad.. she loved the Isle of Man TT races.
We still have the bike at the farm and it still runs thanks to eBay for the replacement parts.
Later, Elaine
Proud Daughter of Walter (Monday) Poniedzialek
540th Engineer Combat Regiment, 2833rd Bn, H&S Co, 4th Platoon
There's "No Bridge Too Far"