Return to Index page 
Next page
Village personalities (No 3)
When boys of fourteen left the village school in the 1930s they had little choice but to start earning money to help the family and this usually meant working on the land. Jack was no exception and he remembers starting work the day after he left school. Horses and men provided the power for agriculture in those days, life was hard and if you upset the farmer you could lose your home as well as your job. The few entertainments available were keenly enjoyed, visits to the cinema at Newmarket or the occasional Sunday excursion train trip to the seaside bringing the highlights of the year. With war looming on the horizon many young farmworkers joined the army to escape the drudgery of farm work and to seek adventure, but Jack's father had died leaving his mother with just ten shillings a week widow's pension. His elder brothers had married or left, so as the only bread-winner he had to stay and support her.
Hitler's invasion of Poland changed all that and Jack, already a member of the Territorial Army, was called for service with The Cambridgeshire Regiment just a few days before war was declared.
The first two years of war were spent in Great Britain in hard training and doing a variety of jobs chiefly involved with defence from invasion, but then Jack found himself on a troopship heading overseas, destination at first unknown. Elation at the thought of at last getting to grips with the enemy quickly faded when they arrived at the ill-fated garrison of Singapore. After putting up a valiant but hopeless fight with totally inadequate equipment against the invading Japanese, Jack along with many thousands of Cambridgeshire Regiment colleagues found himself a prisoner of war. Then started the worst period of his life as he suffered three and a half years of brutal and inhumane treatment at the hands of his captors. Several times he nearly died but for the comradeship of fellow prisoners and a will to live.
November 1945 saw Jack back home in Wood Ditton, gradually regaining his health and fitness. Soon he met up with Doris, the sister of one of his pre-war mates, who had recently become a war widow after a very short first marriage. They decided to make their life together.
Jack had had enough of farm work and after working for periods with the railways and the Forestry Commission, he found a job as a radio mast rigger for the Home Office. Jack remembers pausing on his first big climb up an open ladder and looking down at the ground far below and thinking "If I don't make this one now I'll never do it again". He went on to the top and after that it became easier. Later he worked on some of the big radio/television transmitter aerials as high as 1,000 ft. "It was alright when you were in cloud so you couldn't see the ground!" he jokes.
Jack and Doris have enjoyed fifty-five years of happy married life and have a son also named Jack, two grandsons and two great grandsons. They enjoy their garden, Jack still carrying on the old village tradition of growing your own vegetables in their large corner plot by the Ditton Green crossroads. He even manages to sell a few at the garden gate. Jack has a philosophical attitude to life and has always been a great reader with a particular interest in biographies. He himself has written an extremely moving account of his wartime experiences entitled 'Memories'. It is not on general sale and was written mainly for family and close friends.
So what does he think of Wood Ditton today? "Of course it's changed a lot", he says, "when a village loses its shop and school an important part of village life has gone. But we are much luckier than some villages that have been swamped by new developments, and some very nice people have moved into the village".
One gets the impression that while there are people like Jack and Doris around, some of the best traditions of the village live on.
Jack and Doris relaxing at home
Return to Index page