Audio transcript
Well I was 17 at the start of the war, 1939, and my parents kept a pub (Liverpool Arms), which was across the way from the drill hall, which was adjoining Flint Castle. Of course, a lot of the young boys decided to join up, and they all used to go up to practice into the drill hall, and then when the practice was over, they used to come down to the Liverpool Arms, and have a pint and a chat and decide who was going to win the war, and all the rest of it.
Well now, the public hours were: half past 11 'til three O'Clock and from half past five 'til 10 O'Clock, but on a Sunday, it was closed all day. So that was the time when some of the men decided they'd have a little practice. So they used to go up to the woods opposite Flint hospital, and they used to go with sticks and shovels, spades and brushes, and have a little practice in the woods. You can smile now at Dad's Army, but that's the way it really was!
My father, when he was a young boy, he was hit in the eye with a stone from a catapult, so he was blind in one eye, that was why he couldn't go into the Army. So, to do his little bit, he used to go with the men, and one of the men had an old wagon, and he used to take them all up there on a Sunday morning, in this old wagon. His name was Tommy Williams, but he had got a nickname, and it was Swuck, Tommy Swuck, and we used to get on this wagon and go up to the woods, and my father used to... we used to find the field, there were no houses or nothing, find this field, he used to dig a little hole, a little square, and I used to go and collect the sticks and some paper, we used to take rolls of newspaper and light the fire.
One of the men was a butcher, so he used to make some sausages and bring those up, and of course tea was rationed, and milk was rationed, but we used to get the old tin of condensed milk, and cocoa - that wasn't on the ration. My father used to cook the sausages on the spades and what have you, and I used to give them all a cup of cocoa, made with condensed milk, which was milk and sugar combined, and that was our Sunday morning for quite some time.
At the end of the war, which was 1945, that was the year I was married. Of course, my father had to get special permission from the police to close the pub, because you just couldn't close it then when you wanted to. So we had to get special permission to close the pub, which was on a Thursday. I was to be married on the Thursday. So we got permission to close the pub on the Thursday, and we got married on the Thursday, and then, of course, it was open house to all the customers. One of the men decided, because I was now married, I'd done my little bit for the war effort, so they were going to write to the government, or to the War Office, and tell them what I'd done as regards my little bit towards the war. In consequence, they sent me a dispensation to say that the King appreciated all I've done for the war effort! (ends with laughter)
