Bale During Ww2.

A Memory of Bale.

Hi. After being bombed out three times during 1940 my mother moved my family to Bale in 1941. We lived at no 2 Bale in those days, the last house on the right as you walk through the village, it had a well outside, as well as some coal sheds and an outside toilet, and a fantastic vegetable garden with an apple tree in the middle. I remember starting school at the old Gunthorpe school, about a mile away, and some local children trying their best to get me there, I was only 5 years old. I also remember an old gentleman who we called 'Father Christmas', he used to cut our hair, and roll apples down the road for us to run after. During the summer holidays I was often seated aloft of the thrashing machine as it cut the wheat and spat it out in sheaves, we helped the local farmer for most of our holidays. My mother had a friend by the name of Joyce, I believe, who lived near the 'Penny drink' shop, that laid back from the road (it's no longer there). The winter was as eventful as the summer, and with the snow lying deep all around we children had to wait untill a lorry came through the village heading in the school's direction so that we could follow the tyre tracks, if the lorry turned either left or right at the Holt Road we found the journey to Gunthorpe school tough going, as there were no more tracks to walk through. Sometimes my mother would take us to London to visit an aunt, and we had to get up very early to walk the mile to Thursford Railway Station, pitch black and spooky, as there was a war on and no lights to go by. There was also an occasion when in the summer of 1941 when looking up to the sky I witnessed a British bomber chasing a German bomber, after they had flown over Bale the German was shot down somewhere to the west I think, as I heard the bang, apparently it was the only time during the Second World War that this kind of incident took place over Britain. I was wondering if anyone else remembered this incident and me?

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