The planes now came overhead like
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buzzing flies in a swarm. Manston Airfield was close to Turkey and we saw plenty of dogfights between the planes. As soon as the siren went we had to go to our air raid shelter. We had an underground passage(all brick in) from the court through to the Dandy room of the mill – the Finishing house. Daddy had steps made and had a hole cut in the “Boot” room where the shoes were cleaned and there was an entrance to the tunnel from the “Boot” room under the flagged courtyard and exit into the Finishing room where the paper ran through a gelatine mixture and then dried on wool “Blankets” which ran over and under huge cylinders of hot air. There were three bricked acloves in the tunnel. Joe and I slept in one, Mummy in another and Lizzie the maid in the third. Daddy slept on the ground floor upstairs. No one slept in the house proper or in the bedrooms. When Tinker and Tony(our dogs) heard the siren they would be the first down into the tunnel. Tony was a dachshund with a dropped tummy who later developed heart trouble and probably had a stroke which cause paralysis of his back legs. Joe and I fixed him up with the skate under his tummy and he learned to walk again with a three point action using his two weak back legs together as one. Tinker (Daddy’s dog) was
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knocked by a car at the top of the lane one day and broke one front leg. The vet plastered it but it wouldn’t heal and so he plastered again and said “leave it on till it falls off as I can do no more”. It was on for two months or more and Tinker recovered. He lived for 17 years. Our dogs were treated like family and probably accounts for the un-Australian way I treat my dogs (and cats) here. We all thought the Germans would invade any time. The Army came and dug a huge trench right through our meadow and across Vinters Park (across Ashford Road). It was filled with barbed wire. It was the outer perimeter of the Maidstone defences. Needless to say, Turkey Court was on the outside. Daddy buried all of our valuables in our cellars. All our silver and precious items of value were buried and cemented over. We also buried catchments of food under the floorboards of the house (all over the place). Daddy gave us (Joe and I) instructions that if the Germans came we were to leave the house, go up the garden through the iron palings fence into Moat Park and get across the park into Wellington. Where we were to endeavor to hide ourselves. Daddy was a member of the home guard. My mother unfortunately was a semi-invalid by this, virtually confined to the house.
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A lot of bombs were dropped in Maidstone and you could hear them as they whined down from the bombers. One day Mr Longhurst went home on his bicycle for lunch. He had been speaking to Daddy just before he left. As he approached his home the siren went and he heard the bombs. When he got to his street it was wrecked. As he got nearer he realised it was his home which had been destroyed and his wife with it. She had been talking to her sister over the fence when they heard the siren and Mrs Longhurst didn’t make it back to the house.
We had the funeral from Turkey and Mr Longhurst and his son came to live with us until other arrangements could be made. He was our lorry driver and he and Daddy were great friends. They used to go fishing and camping together but at the mill it was always “Sir” and “Longhurst”. He was a very nice man and, again, almost part of our family. We were always Miss Anne and Miss Joey to him.
At this time we also got to know Robert Martin. His parents owned a coffee or tea plantation in Ceylon and he was a S.V. boarder and in a similar situation to the overseas girls at A.H.S. He was my age and had finished his matric and was offering for the Navy. He eventually got his wings as a sea-fire pilot
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the Naval equivalent to the Spitfire. When the air raids were on, Mummy always insisted he come into the shelter and get into my bed for warmth. He was a nice lad and eventually fell badly for Gwennie Brown – one of Amy’s friends. They should have married but somehow never did. Robert was God-father to Joe’s son, Bob – now a cardiac-vascular surgeon in London. He married later, unhappily I believe, he had two sons.
Tony the dog
Mrs Longhurst casulty
“cemented in silverware”
Jack Longhurst (Lorry driver)
