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| Dunmow Essex |
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My earliest memories are of when I was about eight or nine years of age. We lived in the High Street, Dunmow at the end of a terrace of three houses. Ours was next to the builders yard of J Pepper and son, named after my grandfather John, who died the year I was born. It was a thriving business. I would occasionally go out with my Father and the workmen and no doubt would sometimes get in the way! I can remember helping with the work on the Paddling Pool at the bottom of the Recreation ground. This was near to the river Chelmer and I seem to remember a stream was diverted in order to enable running water to feed the pool. I cannot imagine that system being allowed in the present day!
I did get to know my Grandmother (Charlotte Cant) very well because her house next door became almost like my second home. She was a dear old soul, small of stature like myself. I must have spent many hours in her house chatting, often playing cards. She made a very early lasting impression on me. I shall always remember her last birthday when she would have been in her eighties, a cake was made and the eighty plus candles were set in the base of an upturned large cake tin.
Lighting the candles was a two or three handed job as the first candles lit, had almost burnt down before lighting the last ones. She had to be very quick to blow them out but she did and her face was a picture afterwards.
(left Leslie with grandmother)
Gladys Pepper (far right)
I would sometimes help my Mother (born Gladys Baker) with cooking and this became another interest which was to become very useful when later my Mother became an ambulance attendant during the war. She would often be called out at any time of the day or night to take a patient to hospital or to attend to them at their home. I would come in from school and find things left half way through the preparation of a meal or whatever she had been doing, and I would have to carry on to complete the task so the meal would be ready for my Father when he came in from work.
My mother was also involved in doing duties in the old fever hospital in St Edmonds Lane a journey by bicycle of about one and a half to two miles each way.My mother was a very cheerful busy person and was involved with many of the organisations in the village including The Catholic Women's League,Womens Institute, British Legion, and also St John Ambulance brigade. In time she became Lady Superintendant of the ladies section. She also joined the local ladies bowling Club and was prompt for the Dunmow Players.
Young Leslie
The war period was of course a very traumatic time for everyone. In 1939 brother Jack was employed at Floyds the solicitors in the High Street. He had been in the TA then enlisted into the Army as a clerk and was subsequently posted to North Africa. He was taken prisoner near El Alemein.and sent to a camp in Italy near Lodi South of Milan. When Italy capitulated he was sent to a camp on the border between Germany and Poland near Gorlitz(Staleg 8a.) When the Russians started advancing West in 1945 all the prisoners were marched West for 55 days and he subsequently escaped.
About 1942 brother Tony enlisted into the RAF he spent a year training to be a Navigator and was sent to South Africa for crew training in Wellington Bombers. He subsequently went to Tunisia where a crew was formed to fly in Halifax Bombers and eventually flew in operations over occupied Europe.
During this period we often had relatives from London staying so they could escape the blitz. On one occasion an aunt and uncle and seven children arrived. A week or so later a different aunt and uncle with just two children but also some chickens! However they did not stay for long, and as the man of the family was working, he was only there for week ends I cannot remember where everyone slept. One of the remarks my Father was heard to say during this period was "I am never sure who, or how many will be at home when I get in from work each day" It's probably just as well my Father was a very easy going individual, certainly I can never remember him raising his voice to any of us boys.
Leslie with his parents
Being only young at the time it was certainly exciting and of course very memorable. Essex was sometimes known as bomb ally as the doodle bugs and enemy planes often came over us on their way to bomb London. I can remember on several occasions sleeping in the front downstairs room and listening to the doodle bugs going over with their distinctive droning noise. If the noise stopped suddenly it would indicate that the unmanned flying bomb was coming down. This did not happen very often however (usually not until it reached it's destination of London or it was shot down by our Spitfires and Hurricanes or ground fire).
Other German bombers also had a distinctive engine sound and on one occasion one of these crashed at the bottom of the Braintree Road near the river. All these sounds were heard while I was reading with a torch under the covers because of the nightly black out. The day after the bomber crashed I went down to see the wreckage.
On another occasion a bomb was dropped near to the railway station which killed a taxi driver waiting by the station for fares. Of course like so many other small railway lines the station is no longer there since the Beecham reduction of small rail lines around the country. Much later the railway line became the route for the Dunmow bypass.