Memories of an air gunner
Based at Sandtoft airfield this gunner remembers cycling into Crowle and Belton. In Crowle he was befriended by Pidds the Butchers. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/91/a4104091.shtml
Crowle at War: Part 9. Preserving, Newspapers, – submitted by Bill Goldthorp
Preserving. One could use the sugar ration and occasionally get extra sugar for preserving. My father’s orchard contained a Conference pear and another type of pear tree, Victoria and Damson plums. Green gage plums could be bought from the Ramsdens who owned the Tetley Hall Estate. Every autumn my parents put up about a hundred…
Crowle at War: Part 8. Salted pig – submitted by Bill Goldthorp
My father started to salt his own pig, the shoulder, ham and sides of bacon. I would be sent to Wrights the grocers with a wheelbarrow and return with a block of salt 2 & ½ feet long and a foot wide and high. The cold slab would be deeply covered in salt and the…
Crowle at War: Part 7. Meat, Killing a Pig – submitted by Bill Goldthorp
Meat. We had to make do with our ration of beef and mutton. Pork products we had by the barrow load. Ordinary people could give up their bacon ration and were allowed to keep a pig instead but at the start of the war the government took half the pig when it was killed. Farmers…
Crowle at War: Part 6. War Weapons Week, Rationing – submitted by Bill Goldthorp
War Weapons Week. The whole of Crowle, Catholics and Protestants, Women’s Institute, Men’s Clubs, Pubs, Political parties, Sports’ clubs all joined together in a special week dedicated to raising money for the war. The Crowle Show and Gymkhana occurred that week together with children’s sports day with fancy dress competitions etc, etc. All sorts of…
Crowle at War: Part 5. Entertainment, Fairs – submitted by Bill Goldthorp
Later in the war as Sandtoft became a training and then an active bomber aerodrome. Bomber crashes would occur in the surrounding area. The local lads were usually the first to reach a crash site if it was any where near Crowle. They were always efficient souvenir hunters. The day after the crash, the police…