friendship with the Black American Soldiers, and in particular Zebedee Ford. Zebedee was in charge of “their mail” and so Enid’s father spoke to him “in chapel” and ...
“by the time we were
outside...Mum and Dad had invited him back for a cup of tea and a chat, and we found him very interesting to talk to, and ... Mum and Dad said ‘if you’d like to bring some of your friends of an evening, you can, but only of an evening’. “ Enid was unable to remember where Zebedee came from, but he was in his twenties and possibly came from the Southern States. She believed that he was one of the 749, who lost their lives during Operation Tiger, Slapton Sands, in Devon...”We didn’t know this was going on till afterwards.
affair we just lost touch with all of them and the ‘ranks’ just seemed to close down. It was very hush, hush and it was quite a while before we got know about the tragedy at Slapton.”
After that
‘goodnight’ so we wouldn’t worry. They were always very polite and they never gave you any trouble. They were...just friendly”.
Enid found that it was “very strange” at night because she “did” lots of errands for her Mum and Dad ...
“because there were no telephones in the villages.” When they had to cancel meetings “little notes were made and given to me to take around to the various houses...” and “It was quite weird as you could hear footsteps, and I mean to say I used to take a torch ‘cos some of the houses I had to go to were very narrow paths and a lot of steps, and even in the blackout, you used to be careful how you used the torch, but you just had to be careful and see where you was going and that’s when you would hear these footsteps coming along the road and all of a sudden you’d just see two whites of eyes, so you knew they (the Black Soldiers) were coming towards you...but you got
war was that she felt it made everyone more friendly and that this change carried on after the War in the shape of carnivals and an attitude of ‘sharing’ and ‘caring’ within the community.
The harvest of memories and anecdotes (see
used to it. It didn’t frighten me. The first couple of times it was a bit eerie, but really and truly what I liked about them was they realised they could spot us more easily than we could spot them, because they were in uniform and it being dark, but if we were out and had a white coat on or lightish jacket they could see you coming along in the blackout
...and so they
would always shout
organisation while some recordings are to be found at CAVA
-www.cava-
studies.org) catalogues the determination and resilience of ordinary working people in the area, and their ability to overcome challenging situations and provides a human heritage, which should be an inspiration for the coming changes that future generations in Tavistock and the Tamar Valley may have to face.
Complied by Vanni (Myfanwy) Cook one of the researchers involved in past Tamar Valley projects.
*
http://www.tamarvalley.org.uk/proje cts/cordiale/
5 Tamar Valley What Enid liked most about the
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