Mossband Camp

A Memory of Mossband Ho.

My father was a serving soldier, serving at the RAOC camp until 1948. We lived in the YMCA building in the camp itself and it had a large functions hall attached where one of our officers once entertained the children at Christmas with a magic show. I remember the huge and long-lasting snowfall that stayed around for months into 1948 and the glaring red sunsets over the Cumbrian hills.  I went to school in Gretna, three miles away on the bus, and remember the prefab houses on the Solway - Mum said they would be replaced with proper houses when they got round to it. I also remember the parade that was held in Carlisle with Field Marshal Montgomery riding through the streets in an open car waving to the people lining the street. I can only remember one child's name from those many years ago - a little girl called Yvonne Glendenning who was a classmate and I often wondered what happened to her. There was also a Doctor Newbigood.

Mossband Camp was a prisoner of war camp with German military prisoners.   Some were wonderful at woodwork, even with their limited resources, and one made me a sewing box, french polished, and a toy with a girl feeding geese, that bobbed their heads up and down when a string was pulled. He was called Willi, from Bavaria. I had the sewing box until quite recently, and hope those people got back safely home when the war was over.

I remember one frightening day when Mum and Dad decided to take us two children for a picnic on the Solway. We played happily until the tide went out and we found we had been happily playing on the edge of a cliff. The tide went out fast. Mum was horrified and packed up immediately to go home. She's nearly 90 now and still gets the shivers when she thinks of it.

I remember the school at Gretna with a little sweetie shop near the school gate and a billboard advertising Craven A cigarettes. Children were mostly happy and we played all the usual games - including one I never came across again - picking bits of fluff off each others knitted jumpers to save in a little bottle, so each person had a rainbow of colour in a little bottle. You could get licorice sticks in the shop. Our teacher was a little Welsh lady? Miss Roberts. She taught the alphabet by having us sing a song with all the letters in. Then we pronounced the letters as they would sound in real life, so that "dog" was read and pronounced as "duh", "oh" "guh". It was very effective. We had a daily delivery of milk in half-pint bottles and it was a treat.

We learned several songs - "Billy Boy", "I saw Three Ships come sailing in", "Oranges and Lemons, say the Bells of Saint Clements" ,"Lavender's Blue, Dilly Dilly" and more. It started me off with a great interest in folksong which has been a source of pleasure through the years and still is.  

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