After they were married Walter and Lily set up home Dunsbury
Farm Cottage in Cowplain where Walter was employed. This was
a residence with neither electricity, running water and nor
a proper toilet, and where David vaguely remembers his mother
having to push a pram over the fields to shop. Walter had two
jobs, one in the early morning when he would drive his lorry
to Portsmouth for early morning milk round and then he continued
work on the farm for the rest of the day. However, when David
was four, the family moved to the comparative luxury of 2 Council
Houses in Fiveheads Road, Horndean.
School Days and Mischief
Also in Fiveheads Road was Horndean Boys School. Although
Roger, David’s brother enjoyed school, David was totally
the opposite; he loathed it right from the start. He vividly
remembers his mother taking him in the morning. He reluctantly
stayed until the children were let out to play and then whoosh,
he escaped home. His mother would patiently take him back and
this ritual persisted until one morning his father happened
to be at home. Walter had had enough and he chased his son back
to school with a stick. “I didn’t try it again after
that” laughed Dave.
There were no mobile phones in the 1940s so the during the
winter and in the blackouts, the local beat policeman would
regularly use the phone box on the corner of Fiveheads Road
to phone into the police station. He would leave his bike outside
but the local boys, knowing his routine, would mischievously
borrow it to ride down Horndean Hill leaving the unfortunate
policeman to walk down the hill to collect it. Eventually however,
the policeman outwitted them and chained his bike to the box.
The unlucky illicit rider flew over the handle bars.
Another time they played a trick on a Mr Legg who ran a boys
club in Nash Hall. He had a tiny Austin 7 car and one night
the boys, between them, lifted the car, turned it sideways and
blocked it in a small space. Nevertheless, they ended up lifting
it out again so Mr Legg could return to his home.
Family Life
Despite having to go to school and regardless of the hardships,
“It was a happy life there.” recalled Dave nostalgically.
“We were always getting into mischief and continuously
getting very dirty. That was our life”. The hardworking
Moon family were very democratic. The boys were made to wash
up and the girls to clean the shoes. However, the boys quickly
learned that if they paid her a penny, Ruth, the youngest daughter,
would clean the shoes for them. Later they would assist their
hardworking father to supplement his wages as a lorry driver
for Petersfield Council by cutting hedges (the wood was useful
for firewood); maintaining the triangle of grass at the end
of Fiveheads Road and sometimes assisting with Walter’s
moonlighting work as the village Chimney Sweep.
Preparations for War
When he was 9, in 1939, war was declared and Dave remembers
his mother telling him that Great Britain was now at war with
Germany. Slightly perturbed but certainly excited, he had genuinely
believed that the Germans had actually invaded and was waiting
for them to arrive in Horndean any time.
“But oh dear, what we used to get up to in the war”
declared Dave. “As children, not understanding the dangers,
I think we actually enjoyed the war. No, we had good fun”.
There was an old round cesspit full of soil, in the garden
at 2 Council Houses and it was decided this should be converted
into an air raid shelter. Walter and the boys dug it out, blew
a hole in the side and furnished it with bunk beds. Walter who
became a volunteer fireman during the war, would drive the fire
engine to Portsmouth whenever there was a air raid on. So, when
the siren sounded the girls and their mother rushed into the
shelter. Nonetheless, Dave and Roger, complete with their tin
hats, preferred to watch the flashes and view the searchlights
over Portsmouth.
“In those days, before the trees grew so large, we could
see the over Portsmouth harbour from Fiveheads Road.”
explained Dave. “If, during the day we spied a German
aircraft trying to shoot the barrage balloons, we knew there
would be a raid that night.”
Munitions and Explosives
He may have hated school but with practical bent and a lot
of ingenuity, Dave soon became somewhat of an expert on munitions
and explosive devices.
Dave was the proud owner of a Mossberg wooden .22 army rifle
which he had used to shoot rabbits for the family pot. However,
since there were vague doubts about the gun’s original
origins, the outer wooden casing had been carefully disguised.
On the field, which is now the site of Horndean Junior School
was as a practice area for the Local Defence Volunteer Corp.
During the day the guns were placed tidily and methodically
under the trees ready for the night-time practice session. Obviously
it was an exciting place for the boys but even more interesting
to Dave was the secure ammunition store because, as he explained,
“We had the keys to that ammunition store!!”
Access to the field was obviously restricted but Dave and his
friend, who lived in the Drill Hall alongside, would use this
access to get into the field and use the keys to get into the
ammunition store. It was an Aladdin’s’ cave for
these naughty young boys and an education for the technically
minded Dave. He would take the cordite from the bullets to make
fuses for the detonators. “We used to make bombs by putting
carbide in bottles, screwing the top off and running as fast
as we could. If it didn’t go off we would use the airguns
to set it off.” recalls Dave.
Dave had a maroon jacket which he hated and guiltily remembers
how one day he decided to detonate it. Unfortunately, it blew
the collar out. He was rather worried about going home because
he justifiably expected his mother to go mad. Clothing was on
ration and they had little money for replacement clothes. He
lied and told her he got it hooked on barbed wire. Much to his
surprise, even shock, she took the news very calmly. “Well,
you hated it anyway!”. For extra fun, the boys would blow
up hard cowpats in the field or blow rats out in the stables
at the farm!
There was an army tip at old Blendworth where all the rubbish
went. Of course, this was a magnet for the local boys who would
illicitly would ‘sort it out.’ One day to their
cost, they found some enticing smoke bombs and took them home.
They just couldn’t resist just letting one off. They set
it outside the door of the shed so nobody could prove it was
them and after lighting the bomb, they quickly sheltered inside.
Nonetheless, this was one experiment that did go wrong, the
smoke blew back into the shed leaving them choking and coughing.
“We never, ever, did that again.” said Dave.
Walter, it appears, was not quite so proficient with explosives
as his son. One firework night he insisted on letting off the
fireworks himself. He put a firework on the window sill and
when it went off, it smashed the window! “It must have
had the wrong instructions on it” he insisted!!
Befriending the Troops
Sometime before the D-Day invasion there was a build-up of
troops in the area and Canadian, American and British troops
moved in. The troops were stationed along the A3, from Horndean
village to the Causeway. This was extremely exciting and indeed
useful for these enterprising and ever hungry boys. They very
quickly learned to avoid visiting the English troops because
“their food was rubbish”. However, the Americans
and the Canadians had far better rations and what is more, they
were more than willing to share! Lonely for female company,
the visiting Americans troops would ask if the boys if they
had sisters to bring along. Wisely, neither Roger nor Dave let
on that their sisters were actually even younger than themselves.
It remained unlikely that they would need to remedy this rather
useful evasion because mostly, the troops would move on during
the night. The Hazleton Woods in Horndean was the site of the
main cookhouse where the boys would offer to peel the potatoes
or take on other jobs. This was rewarded with large slices of
cake.
Resourceful Eating
Walter had worked for the council driving the dust cart. Dave
recalled how adjacent to Nash Hall in London Road, Horndean
there had been two garages - one was used to park the council
lorry and the second used as the Canadian cookhouse, “Which
was quite handy” laughed Dave. One day the ever resourceful
Walter just happened to notice that the cooks were using only
a small percentage of the large legs of beef they prepared and
cooked and the rest was disposed of. Horrified at the waste,
he quickly pointed this out to the cook who offered him the
remains. He gratefully took advantage of this generous offer
“and our family lived on stews for quite a while”,
laughed Dave. His father also kept, rabbits, two pigs and six
chickens. “You were allowed to keep one pig for eating,”
explained Dave. “But you lost your meat ration.”
The Ministry took the other one but you were paid for it.”
There was no sentimentality in those days for hard-up families,
especially those with hungry boys. Walter would notice when
one hen had stopped laying and inevitably, that bird turned
up for Sunday lunch!