Wartime In Ickburgh Fields

A Memory of Ickburgh Fields.

I was evacuated with my mother to a back to back semi-detached flint cottage situated in a clearing in the pine forests. There was no sanitation or running water or electricity. There was a tiny kitchen with a black range adjoining a parlour with stairs in one corner leading to two bedrooms.

We used candles with cardboard shields to shade them from enemy eyes of the German bomber planes attacking the surrounding British and American airfields.
The owner of the cottage was Miss Ivy Smith (who married an American after the war and moved to the States) and we would watch the searchlights at night streaking across the sky and hear the gunfire of fighting planes. At the age of four I knew the different engine sounds of Spitfires and Messerschmitts.

We had a radio which was powered by a heavy glass battery; it had to be recharged every so often. The W.C. Was a wooden thunderbox down the garden and water was drawn from a well. There was no road to the cottage, just rough tracks..

During the severe winter of (I think) 1942/3 Mum collected pine cones in sacks for the Forestry. She would write her name in pencil on a scrap of paper, put it in the top of the sack, tie it up and leave it in a designated place for collection. I went with her one very snowy day and was cold enough to get frostbite in my toes, which was treated with a hot bread poultice.

The cottage was haunted by a noisy poltergeist who banged on the door in the middle of the night. One time the wee brass crinoline lady rang from her place on the parlour sideboard. Mum and Miss Smith gave each other a scared look and sent me through to see what was what. Nothing there that was visible of course!

Marion MacDonald
Arbroath
Scotland

I might have a faded snapshot or two somewhere.

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