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'My family moved from Lower Bevendean Farm, Brighton a few days before Christmas 1942,' recalled Norman Allcorn. That was my Grandparents, Parents and myself aged just 10 years old.
It was a grey, overcast, windy winter's day following overnight rain. The first of the two removal vans got stuck in the slippery, narrow gateway of the front drive, which had been designed much more for pony and trap.
The second van had to start loading from the back door across the back yard. In so doing this upset my mother's careful planning of which was to be loaded first. Worse was to come because the Removers had under estimated the large farmhouse furniture and it would not all go on two lorries.
Left behind were all those essentials like a kettle, mugs, and a packet of tea. Also left behind were my Christmas presents, which I finally got 10 days after the event.
I was upset to find that 'Loppy' my pet black rabbit was not coming with us and even more upset when I remembered that we had rabbit for dinner the previous Sunday.
The reason we were leaving Bevendean was because my Grandfather was too much of a traditional farmer, some would say 'stick in the mud'. The Country needed food but he had not moved on from the 1930's, a time of cheap imports and low incomes.
Our neighbour had a caterpillar tractor ploughing five furrows and milked his cows with machines. Our flock of Southdown sheep had been sold but we were still using horses and milking the Shorthorn cows by hand. (I started hand milking on my seventh birthday!)
All this did not impress the War Agriculture Committee and so they had 'Compulsorily Requisitioned' the farm. By a grim irony this same committee had offered my father a job as Manager at a farm that had been similarly requisitioned. This was Messens Farm, Ninfield.
Eventually the removal vans got away and I was allowed to travel in the cab with the workmen. We arrived at Messens in the middle of the afternoon with not too much daylight left. All would have been well but the out-going occupants were still there!
The Farmer's mother and wife were in the house but the Farmer was stomping around the farmyard with a loaded shotgun under his arm. The local 'Bobby' arrived and quietened things down.
We started unloading, under police escort, through the front door while the others were still moving out of the rear of the house. When both lorries were empty the Policeman said that he had to go and all should be well but not to go into the kitchen as crashing noises had come from there.
In the morning my Grandmother was annoyed to find that someone had taken a sledgehammer to a lovely old built-in Welsh Dresser and smashed all the shelves.
With the kitchen out of bounds, tea was made by boiling a saucepan on an open fire and my Father cycled to Sidley for some fish and chips. I then went to bed but my most abiding memory of the day was yet to come.
This was waking up and going to the toilet down a long dark passageway with a gale howling, wolf-like, through the tall trees at the side of the house.
Even now, after all this time, I can still close my eyes and imagine myself back in that black corridor and hear that eerie, mournful wailing wind.'
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