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January 2003
Happy New Year to you all, be you freezing cold, growing webbed feet as we are in England or baking in the sun of the Southern Hemisphere!
I was thrilled with the photographs I received after last month's newsletter. Australia looked particularly inviting although I have great sympathy with those of you suffering from the fires and the drought. Hope things are getting better and remember to splash on the sunscreen. I was most moved by the eChristmas cards that I received and by the emails that many of you sent. (It is nice to be appreciated.) One email in particular must be mentioned and that came from David Wells in New Zealand. He asked that I display his message on the website and this I have done. Please go to the Feltwellian list and, near the top of the page, click on 'message'. David's father served with 75(NZ) Squadron during the war and he will, I'm sure, be delighted to hear that I recently met with members of the 75 Squadron about siting a memorial plaque in the village. We have decided that it will be situated next to our War Memorial, in matching stone. The squadron are erecting memorials in all the locations from which they flew but Feltwell has a special significance because it was, apparently, here that the first British crews joined the squadron. We only have the bureaucracy to get through now. David will also be interested to learn that his namesake has just moved into the village, which caused me great confusion initially when the new one sent me an email stating such!
Talking of airmen, I have managed to obtain 20 photographs of various airmen taken outside the Chequers Public House. The originals are in the possession of an ex-landlady of the pub, Mrs Caban, but unfortunately there are no names attached to any of them. Please have a look at Page 2 of the RAF Feltwell Memorial page; perhaps some of you have copies of some of these photos in your families. It would be good if we could start to identify the individuals. I've also added all the photographs kindly provided by Alison Whistler mainly to Site 2 (see the Whistler-Walden page) but a couple of 'scenes of the village' have gone on to Site 1.
I make no apologies for including this email from Brian Watts.
"One of my earliest memories is when my family lived with several other families on both Methwold and Feltwell airfields in what we use to call the" tin huts" but were I believe used previously by the airmen of RAF Feltwell and RAF Methwold.
Dad was just out of the Navy and times were hard. Mum and Dad squatted in one of the huts, as did the other families living on site 4 and site 5. Material things were in short supply and I remember Mum used newspaper for curtains and friends or relatives gave items of furniture and beds.
One of the huts was converted into a shop and was run by a lady called Dolly Cooper who later had a shop in Feltwell opposite the old primary school. Every body that lived on the camps loved Dolly, she was kind and would let people have food and be paid when they could afford it.
I seem to remember there was woodland and we kids used to spend hours playing in the woods. I learned how to make a bow and arrow from wood cut from the trees and binder string collected from the farmland surrounding the huts.
The hut was heated only by a coke fire set in the middle of the hut. I can remember collecting sticks and pieces of wood from the woods to burn as additional fuel.
During the summer holidays I used to "help" the farm workers working on the land around the huts, it was in the days when horse and carts were still being used. The land was owned by Ted Porter. One of his workers was Chris Howes and he would let me ride on the horse all day, which was great fun. I believe Chris emigrated to Australia.
I have memories of creeping up to the airfield fence to watch the aircraft one of which was I believe a jet, maybe a Meteor or similar, perhaps you could verify which type of aircraft were flying from Methwold in the early fifties.
I was glad when we moved into Feltwell not least because it was a lot nearer to school."
One day I intend to create a page devoted to Brian's recollections. Keep them coming, Brian.
I am beginning to feel that I am at last wrestling control of my life back from the website! What with the (almost) completion of Site 3 and Sites 1 and 2 only requiring monthly upgrades (tinkerings!) I can start to turn my attention to other matters. The 'Feltwell in the News' section (described last month) will appear some time this year. As I've not heard from the local newspaper I am going to assume that copyright will not be an issue; after all most of the items that I will be using are over 20 years old. I also want to pick up an old discarded project, one that I first mentioned over two years ago. I want to produce a (historical) village walk using text and photos from the website. Before you say it, I know I'm mad!
Membership seems to be stable at about 140; we have lost and gained in almost equal numbers over the year.
