Although I was born in Warminster, 21 Silver Street, in the flat above the bicycle shop, the family moved back to Salisbury whilst I was still just a babe in arms. In 1936/7 we lived at 1 Hurst’s Terrace, Windsor Road, in 1956 Hursts Terrace starts at No.2 so our house had presumably been demolished. In 1937/8 we had moved to 52 Fairfield Road and in 1939 we moved to 17 Woodstock Road which is the earliest home I can remember, we lived there until we moved to 7 Bourne Villas, College Street in 1951.

Some of my earliest memories

Probably my very earliest memory is of going to visit Aunty Elsie, Fathers eldest sister. I would have been about 3 or 4 years old. She was a lovely little old lady, and I do mean little, if I recall correctly she was a scant 5 feet tall and about 7 stone wet through, always smiling. She lived at 10 Cecil Terrace Lower Road Bemerton. The front door was a dull green, all the gloss gone from it, and it stuck at the bottom so that the shiny brass letterbox cum knocker rattled as you opened the door. On the left hand wall of the passageway was a large picture of a Highland Regiment charging in some famous Battle. In the living room she had a Kitchen Range that gleamed like a new pin, with its fire on the left and its oven on the right it filled the room with a warm glow and produced cakes that melted in your mouth. Over the mantle shelf hung a picture called “9 pints of the law”, you can still buy it today some 63 years on.  In fact I saw a copy of it in the card shop the other day, mid November 2003. I mention Aunt Elsie because we used to walk from Woodstock Road to her house a distance of about 2.5 miles each way, some distance for a small child. It did have 2 highlights though, at the bottom of Cherry Orchard Lane there are 2 railway arches and if you shouted under them you got a wonderful echo and you could feed the Ducks at Lower Road.

One trip that especially sticks in my memory, Mother had a Double Pram, with 2 hoods, Terry in the front, Tony in the back, and little me holding on to the side, we went to Aunt Elsie’s in the pouring rain. When we arrived I was soaked to the skin and all my clothes had to be dried out before we returned. What was so important to make mother walk all that way in the pouring rain? (Family Mystery or just habit)

School Days at St Marks.

I remember my first day as if it were yesterday, St Marks Infants School on Wyndham Road, a Church of England School, I arrived as the others did all scrubbed and polished in my new school clothes. Dropped of by mother who gave my name, address, date of birth and all the required detail that the powers that be seem to consider vital for a small boy to be educated. She then went home leaving me to my fate. There was none of the easing into it with half days to start with that prevails today, in you went, deep end, sink or swim you were on your own. Sit there boy, sit still, be quiet and speak when your spoken to, raise your right hand if you wish to speak and you will call me SIR when you speak to me, you will stand up when I come into the room and remain standing until I say sit.

These rules set the stage for the next 10years. Those who tried bucking the system usually got the cane, so we all learned at an early age to keep our heads down and not to make waves. The survival instinct that is inbuilt in small children coming rapidly to the fore. You where there to learn and learn you would whether you liked it or not, dragging your feet was not an option. “Pay attention Boy” the raised voice, the pointed finger, and the bang on the desk with the cane dragged the wandering mind back to the subject in hand pretty sharply I can tell you.

My first teacher was Mr Vincent, a large portly man who moved slowly with the aid of a stick due to a combination of his age and weight. At 5 years of age all grown up’s look old, but he was “old “ old, as I recall a friendly man who I remember with some affection as he was the person responsible for the first two years of my education.

We settled down to learn about sums, English, geography, history, religion and art. Sums I hated until one day the penny dropped and it all became a lot clearer. We chanted our “Times Tables” daily with an almost religious fervour; parrot fashion is the term I believe. We struggled with multiplication, division, addition, subtraction, fractions, and adding and subtracting in Pounds, Shillings and Pence, not as easy as Decimals I can tell you. English I liked, apart from adjectives and verbs that were a mystery to me for years, I’m still not to sure about them to this day. The “Tenses” I was good at, some children had great difficulty with them, however they just clicked with me, past, present, and future, easy, what was their problem ?

Learning to read was a revelation to me, it opened up a world to me that I could not have dreamed of., I could not read enough. I still can’t. Adventure stories, tales of daring exploits up the Limpopo River or some other exotically named places, and I would read them over and over again. Kitchener, Baden Powel, all larger than life schoolboy heroes and places such as Khartoum and Mafekin all created such wonderful dreams in small boys fertile minds. Comics such as The Boys Own Paper, the Eagle and the Biggles Books, hours of fantasy in which you are the hero that saves the day I feel so sorry for today’s children who have never experienced sitting down to read a book that you can’t put down, they will never no what they have missed. “I don’t do books,” is probably the saddest thing they will ever say.
 
Geography and history were partially combined as we learned all about the British Empire; it was shown in red on the maps of the world and there was a lot of red. An empire upon which the sun never set, and how the white man, (i.e. English Men) had gone out there to civilise the heathens and teach them to wear clothes and all about the only true god. Truth to tell we robbed them blind of anything of value stole their land and shot them if they had the temerity to argue. We employed them for pittance wages to work the mines in appalling conditions digging for Diamonds, Gold, Silver, Copper and any other thing that was of value to us. Still, what did it matter, they were only natives, they lived in mud huts, they were expendable labour that we were showing the way to true salvation with the true god weren’t we? They did have one or two minor victories in Victorian times, mainly in the Zulu Wars, however these were short lived and retribution for them was swift, and viciously violent. Who were the real savages I have to ponder? Apart from these and the occasional missionary that was eaten we were the top dogs and heaven help those that forgot it. We in our child like naivety truly believed that we were helping them and that they were grateful to us for that help, oh the joys of propaganda, tell your story often enough and people will believe any thing.
 
We still celebrated “Empire Day”, in the morning we would all line up in the playground, wave our flags, and sing patriotic songs usually finishing with Jerusalem and God Save the King. The vicar, the Reverent Hyam, would then say a few prayers, mainly for us and our souls, and a quick one for the poor heathens that they would soon see the light and become good Christians and show their gratitude to us by working harder. We would then have the rest of the day off school.  We liked empire day, it was only a couple of hours at school that day.

Apart from having to learn a lot of “Dates” such as 1066,Norman Invasion, one in the eye for poor old Harold, and in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, he discovered America (allegedly) other dates are a little vague. It was the stories that fascinated me, the Boar War, the Crimea and Florence Nightingale, Karhtom, Mafekin and Baden Powel, the First World War; these were all fairly recent history to me as are the Second World War, Korea, and Vietnam to today’s children.

The War Years

Hitler was an impatient person and started the war whilst I was only 3years old, so it is difficult to say when I first realised that there was a war on. As I had no knowledge of “Pre War” I suppose that I assumed, when I was capable of assumption, that Rationing and Shortages were all part of normal life. Dig for Victory, Waste not Want Not, Join the Land Army, did not mean a lot to a 3-9 year old.
However, I could sense a prevailing undertone of people talking in hushed voices, children absent from school because their fathers were not coming home. It took a while to realise that this meant “Never”. It did not occur to you to question the “Status Quo” it was how things were; there was a war on,” end of story”. “Don’t you realise there’s a war on”, was the stock answer to any query or problem that cropped up. (A bit like Computer error these days)

Father was in a “reserved occupation” maintaining overhead telephone lines for the GPO (General Post Office) so he was at home throughout the war. In the winter when the weather was bad it was nothing for him to be gone for a couple of days replacing wires that the weather had brought down. As these were copper wires strung between poles at the roadside or alongside the railway lines and it did not take too much snow and ice to bring them down. These somewhat fragile means of communication had to be kept going at all cost during the war. As he was out and about in the country most of the time we seemed to have had plenty of Rabbit, Poultry, Game, butter and eggs that mysteriously appeared from nowhere,” Black Market?” never!!! He was however in the Home Guard, Dads Army, they used to hold their parades at the Rising Sun public house at the bottom of Wyndham Road, which was knocked down about 2002.

I do remember on one occasion he was most annoyed to be reprimanded for omitting to clean the buttons on the back belt of his army greatcoat. They were issued with rifles and bayonets but they only had blanks issued when on an exercise, on some occasions they used bangers like the ones in Christmas crackers to simulate the rifle being fired, needed a fair amount of imagination I should think, but they never had any live bullets for them.

Personally I only ever once saw a German plane close up, it was a hot sunny afternoon, Tony, mother and I were walking along Castle Street towards the Blue Boar Row when this large German bomber came over, very low and very loud, I believe it crashed in the Moberly Road area. I vividly remember seeing the large black Iron Cross painted on the fuselage, Swastikas on the wings and the crew in the cockpit, the Air Raid Siren had not been sounded so presumably it was a damaged stray from a raid somewhere.
Mother dragged us both into the foyer of the White Horse Hotel, quite what protection it would have provided had it decided to drop it’s bombs is debatable. Apart from Italian P O W’s, who were quite happily sitting out the war, that was the only time that I saw the enemy. The Italian POW’s all wore brown uniforms with large Yellow discs sewn onto the back, presumably to make them conspicuous if they tried to escape. Not that they seemed in a hurry to go anywhere. As the war progressed they seemed to have the run of the area, some worked on farms, some built the prefab houses on Stratford Road, 10 years they were supposed to last, temporary housing they called them, they were pulled down in the 1980’s. 40years on, not bad for temporary houses.

In August 2003 whilst doing some research into the Family Tree at Salisbury Library I was going through the Salisbury Times for 11th August 1950 when I came across an article on page 8 that triggered some pleasant memories. It referred to my old Boy Scout Troop, the St. Edmunds 14th Sarum Troop. We went on our first summer camp from 28th July to 5th August at Timberscombe near Minehead Somerset. The vicar of St. Edmunds the Reverent Goodall was in charge. We went by train and on arrival had to haul all our kit from the station to the farm on a handcart, a fair old trek as I recall. It was up on the moors at the end of a long and very stony track. We used to go for Donkey rides over the moors get lost and rely on the Donkeys to find our way back to the farm. Fond memories of 10 happy days.

Donald H Bevis (Don)