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Don McDouall was evacuated from London during World War II when he was five years old. He was sent to the small country village of East Hanney to live with Grans and Grampy at a house called Tamarisk. He now lives in Australia.
It seemed everywhere you went and everywhere you looked there were soldiers! The main road through the village of East Hanney was now a never-ending stream of vehicles. There were lorries, motorbikes and jeeps with big white stars on their bonnets. There were small tanks and large tanks, gun carriers and bulldozers on lowloader's.
There were large guns bouncing along on four wheels and great big lorries with canvas covered tops. There were long articulated lorries that carried gliders and airplanes with folded wings. Some lorries had wheels in the front and tracks at the back. The Yanks called the lorries trucks making all the kids laugh.
All these long columns of vehicles just rolled on never ending, with soldiers all over them. Sandwiched between the vehicles were mobile cookhouses and bouncing searchlights.
There were soldiers on motorbikes some even on push bikes. The tarmac road turned into big heaps of black looking gravel, especially on the corners where the tanks slewed around the corners and pushed up long ridges of what had been the road.
Such a mess kept the local roadman Mr Tarry so busy that he had to have help from the local Home guard. Special policemen, like Mr Bedwell, were waving their white-banded arms around at every road intersection. It was very hard to get across the road and when some fool kid took the risk and bolted across like a scared rabbit there was absolute mayhem, as vehicles often would run into the back of each other.
Every now and then this great snake of a convoy would grind to a halt. The place then would come alive with British, Canadian and Yank soldiers. If they were Yanks, the village kids would score some chocolate and gum and more cigarettes or edible biscuits. But if it were the British army kids would be lucky to get even a biscuit, which if you did happen to succeed in would be so hard that you couldn't bite into it!
If the soldiers were camping overnight then the local kids would get to see inside a tank or better still sit around the fire with all these men and listen to their jokes and swearing and often to their music and singing as well.
This vast convoy just went on and on for days. It was late springtime and although we didn't know it at the time, it was all part of the build up to 'D-Day'. After a few weeks of this continuous roar and just as everybody had got use to it all, it all stopped.
Suddenly one morning it was all quiet. The only thing left for us kids was collecting all the shiny long bits of metal foil that seemed to be everywhere. It was evidently dropped by aircraft, but I never found out whether it was the Jerries or the Allies that littered the place up. Most likely it was the Jerries.
I had a big ball of this metal tape like material. Then the scare went around amongst us kids that the tape poisoned you if you touched it so I threw mine in the pond near the chapel.
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