Terry Smith – World War 11 Memories- Little Horwood and North Crawley
I was born at 11, Church Street Little Horwood in March 1942.
My father worked for and was in charge of a large herd of Ayrshire Cattle owned by a mega London builder named George Gee. My mother was a Landgirl who dad married at Newport Pagnell Registry office in November 1941.
In 1937-38 Gee hired a hunting lodge in Little Horwood for a season’s hunting with the Whaddon Chase Hunt which hundreds of London high society members joined in.
During that time he bought 1000 acres of farmland on high ground in Little Horwood as well as Creslow Manor near Whitchurch and Wakefield Farm at Potterspury. The local story was that he had a bet with The Hunt Master Lord Roseberry for £1000 that he could build a Manor House before the first meet of the hunt by September 1939.
He also built a state of the art modern dairy at Warren Farm from bricks from the old Adelphi Theatre in London which he had rebuilt and also was to build a signals army camp linked to Whaddon Hall and Bletchley Park as well as an airfield for RAF Little Horwood with foundations of London bomb damage which came in by train to Swanbourne station.
Our house was in the direct flight path for Wellington bombers and one crashed 50 yards from our back door killing 7 on board. My dad told my mum to take me down the cellar of The Shoulder of Mutton pub which was just across the road. Firefighters from the airfield and Winslow fire brigade attended and my dad let one brigade lay hoses up our garden path and then hopped on the other engine to show them the way to access the plane up Hill Farm driveway.
My mother delivered milk to the Officers Mess at the Signals camp who were all on the payroll of MI 6.
My dad was in Little Horwood Home Guard who had a base at the stables of Little Horwood Manor. Routine duties were to occupy the very top floor of the Manor House overlooking the village and the airfield and also patrolled the perimeter of the parish and Home Guard did exercises at Swanbourne Station and RAF Little Horwood. On Sunday mornings they all gathered at Whaddon Hall for target practise.
Dad knew George Gee and Richard Gambier Parry well and said they were always “Thick as Thieves” and during the war years Gambier Parry lead the Whaddon Chase Hunt.
Richard Gambier Parry had a free spend with MI6 and bought the whole stock of American Packard Cars in the UK, some for his own and staff use and others were converted with radio sets at a large building on Manor farm Little Horwood for the use of Patten, Montgomery and other generals.
The communications network that MI6’s head of communications, Richard Gambier–Parry, had set up had, in his own words, ‘no rival in the world’. The web of aerials stretched across many, many, hilltops. That the paperwork did not always keep up with this ferment of construction is not surprising: and the bean–counters at MI6’s head office could have shown more forbearance than they did. Gambier–Parry certainly thought so, as his volcanic reply to the paymaster of MI6 (Commander Sykes) in July 1941 shows (he had been accused of poor record keeping):
‘No consideration at all is given to the fact that during the period our annual estimates… tripled… and we were working at the highest pressure, forming a military unit, equipping some 60 technical vehicles, putting up two broadcasting stations and a recording centre, at a speed which many experts would believe impossible, carrying ever–increasing telegraphic traffic, developing the new science of agent communications, coping with SOE communications, carrying an expanding circulation of Polish signals at home and abroad, and endeavouring to contribute to the process of winning the war. But then the auditors wouldn’t want to know what we do in any of these fields. It seems to be of greater importance to them that one order has become entangled with another.’
Across the road from the original Manor farmhouse at Little Horwood was a secret hut where no one could enter but where much planning for D-Day was done.
My friend Ted Bull was always scared of going near the airfield at Little Horwood in case large gliders crashed in to him. Major Howard and the Oxon and Bucks Infantry were towed over the channel in large gliders and took Pegasus Bridge 6 hours before the D Day landings.
George Gee died in 1943 the new Manor House which he had built and the farms stayed in military hands until 1945 when Michael Dewar , Churchills envoy to Washington handling the Lease Lend arrangements between the USA and Britain for import of the Sherman Tank , took over the Manor House and all the farms. A Sherman tank named Michael is still in the Tank Museum at Bovingdon Dorset.
One of the friends I played with named Roy Viccars lost his father Mark Price Viccars in Egypt in 1942.
My Uncle Jim (Williams)fought with Wingates Chindits in the Jungles of Burma against the Japanese and was left by his platoon because he had disentry and was ill . Luckily he was able to avoid the Japanese and rejoin his platoon. He later served in India and brought home two fabulous carved birds which he gave to my Mum and Dad that we had on our mantlepiece for years.
At North Crawley my Uncle Percy (Newberry) was the police officer living in the Police House in Chicheley road with my Auntie Hetty.
Don Savage always told the story that he stood with my Auntie Hetty in Chicheley road watching Coventry burn in the devastating bombing raid on 14th November 1940.
On that night 300 German bombers dropped 500 tons of explosives, 33,000 incendiary bombs and dozens of parachute mines on the industrial city of Coventry which killed 507 civilians with 420 seriously injured and left the historic cathedral in ruins.
It was one of the worst nights of the Blitz endured by Britain from 7th September 1940 to 10th May 1941 and lasted for 10 hours. It was a moonlit night codenamed by the Germans “Moonlight Senata”