Dear Elizabeth,

This sound fascinating reading and yes i am very sorry i couldn't read your facebook page on Christmas day.

I would love to here more about Mr Hubert Benton,

I would be more then willing to put up an article about him on the Widdington Village website, if you would like to write or maybe let me scan some of the non personal letter i could do a little research on the chap as i am sure others would be very interested in him

I do receive a lot of request from folk from all around the world about Widdington and the folk who have lived and worked there.

Happy New Year 

Best Regards

Gary 

Dear Elizabeth,

Many thanks for letting me read one of George's letters. 

It must have been terrible times out there in Flanders.

i have done a little research on George, as i was very moved and wanted to find out a little more about this chap.

Private George Hubert Benton. is laid to rest in a war grave at:

Heuvelland, West Flanders (West-Vlaanderen), Belgium.

please see photos of his headstone.

Father: George Benton

Birth abt 1867 in Brierley Hill, Staffordshire, England

Mother: Eliza Benton

Birth abt 1867 in Brierley Hill, Staffordshire, England

Daughter:  Louisa Elizabeth Benton

Birth 1887 in Brierley Hill, Staffordshire, England

Daughter: Alice Emily Benton

Birth 1890 in Brierley Hill, Staffordshire, England

Son: George Herbert Benton

Birth 1892 in 6 William St. Brierley Hill, Dudley, DY5 3BP

Death 13 April 1915 in West Flanders 

His Father ran a number of different pubs in the area

the Dog & Partridge,136 High Street, Brierley Hill, could have been one of them.

i would love to hear more about George. 

i am not sure where you are in the country but if i can be of any assistance with the scanning or research

please just say 

also i would like to put something up on the Widdington website about him digging trenches in and around the village 

Best Regards

Gary  

Daphne Stalley
THE WAR YEARS 1939—1945

In September 1989, the 50th Anniversary of when war was declared, I wrote an article for Widdington Magazine called Outbreak of War, September 1939, which they published. I shall, therefore, start by recording this account, as I wrote it, eleven years ago. I was eight years old and during that summer there had been talk of war and some Austrian refugees came to Widdington. I still remember their names, and some of them became friends of my Aunt Ruth. A titled lady, Mrs Von Karla and her two daughters stayed at our house for a while. I remember the daughters were very pretty and spoke perfect English.

We were all supplied with gas masks which were black and came in three sizes, small, medium and large. I had a small black one but would have liked to have had a Mickey Mouse gas mask which was brightly coloured and supplied to very small children. At school we used to practise wearing these and tried to be brave. They felt a bit hot and stuffy and when you breathed out, they made a rude noise at the side. Later on in the war, an additional filter was added which was bright green. I am thankful that we never did have a gas attack and had to wear them for real.One Sunday afternoon we walked right to the end of Cornells Lane and along the cart track to the fields. A huge trench was being dug from left to right as far as you could see and was called a “tank trap”. I am glad that this was never put to use either and I expect it was filled in long ago.

On Sunday, September 3rd, I sat on our front door step with the cat. As a child, I spent quite a bit of time sitting there because in that elevated position, I could see right across the green and beyond, and watched everything that went up and down the road. Also the sun always shone in those days! I sat there waiting for the evacuees to arrive from the East End of London. Each house had previously been visited to see how many children they could take in. We had been recorded as having room for two girls. When the coaches arrived, they stopped outside the Hut and the occupants went in there to be sorted out. They all seemed to be mothers with small children and were allocated to various houses in the village. We didn’t have anyone at that time but later on in the war we did have two girls with us for a year. Their names were Anne Webster and Valerie McClelland. During the next week or so the mothers used to sit on the village green during the day and Widdington must have been a very bewildering place after the East End of London. I remember one lady going into the village shop and asking for some beetroot and when she found it wasn’t cooked, she didn’t want it. I didn’t know you could buy cooked beetroot. Most of the mothers soon moved back to London but three families stayed until the end of the war. As they lived quite near to us, we became very friendly. They were Jewish and I was interested in their different customs. They also introduced us to new foods such as halva, matzo and cooking oil. I was especially friendly with one family, namely Mrs Israel and her children, Godfrey, Lilly and Stanley and visited them once when they returned to Spitalfields, London, but that was forty years ago. I  often wonder how they are.After that memorable day in 1939 we eventually started a new term at school and life settled down but was never quite the same again. We had food rationing and when I asked my father what that meant, he said that everyone would be allocated a set amount of food. As I didn’t eat much in those days and meal times were a bit of a worry, I replied that if I couldn’t eat mine all up I would have to leave it!! However, we managed and although we didn’t have the variety of food we have today, we didn’t go hungry. (I used to long for an orange though). We often laugh because I got married on September 3rd, but that was sixteen years  later. We are still battling on!

Preparations for war were made during the summer of 1939. Mum bought a load of blackout material to make curtains as when it got dark, no lights were allowed to show. The cry of “Put that light out” was heard if a light was seen from a window or door. I have already mentioned the gas masks and Ration Books were issued for food. Sweets were in short supply and it was better when they came on ration as everyone had something even though it was only 2 ozs a week. Bread wasn’t rationed until after the war. Eventually clothes came on ration and nothing was wasted. “Make Do and Mend” was a slogan and every scrap of material, wool and paper was put to good use. When I see what is left at the end of a jumble sale today, I think of the war years when everything would have been sold. Some people had money but not enough clothing coupons and some people with large families had the coupons but no money so deals were done. There was a great trade in second hand goods. If you needed to replace household linen, you had to apply for dockets. There was The Ministry of Food, Ministry of Fuel and Power and a Ministry of everything else. Funnily, you didn’t need clothing coupons for hats. We had enough food but there was nothing very fancy. We fared better in the country as we grew vegetables, had fruit in season and the meat ration was helped out with the odd rabbit, pigeon or dare I mention pheasant which Dad caught. Sausages tasted more of rusks and seasoning than meat, the bread had a darker texture, probably because the flour was not so refined and cakes and biscuits were only plain as there was hardly any icing sugar about. Christmas cakes were “iced” with dried milk and water. It looked all right but didn’t taste like icing. Later on in the war, America helped us out by sending dried egg and spam. Ships went in convey across the Atlantic but were often destroyed by U-boats. We never had any oranges or bananas until after the war. Milk was fetched in a can from the milk shop at Pond Mead and when I was small, Uncle Horrie was the milkman. He used to bring the milk in and put it through a filter and then measure it out. Later on, milk was brought to the house by Mrs Walters and her daughter from Quendon in a churn and measured out. Sometimes I went across the meadow at the back of our house to Mrs Campbell’s at Priors Hall Farm to get milk. I cannot remember when we stopped fetching milk and it was delivered to the door. We mostly drank tea during the day and cocoa when we went to bed. Very rarely we had coffee which was either ground coffee and made in a jug or Camp Coffee in a bottle. There was no instant coffee at all.

The displays in shop windows were made of cardboard as the goods inside were very depleted. The bananas were made of plaster. There were only a few toys in the shops and these were mostly lead soldiers, toy tanks and other war vehicles, books made of greyish poor quality paper, a few lead farm animals and dolls with cardboard heads and rag bodies. People made soft toys out of old coats which were also used to make rugs. The material was cut into strips and pegged through with a special tool onto a piece of sacking. Newspapers consisted of only a few pages on recycled paper.

Before Jimmy and Ruthie were born, Mum sometimes took in paying guests. They had the front bedroom and meals in the front room and she was an excellent caterer. I have her Visitors Book and it appears that Mrs Emma Karplus came in July 1939 and in August we had Mrs Von Kahler and her two daughters Lieselotte and Elfie who spoke perfect English and had been presented at Court. They were all Austrian refugees escaping the Nazi regime and came to Widdington with the help of the Tugendhats who came to Widdington in 1938. Mrs Von Kahler gave Mum lots of beautiful clothes and these were adapted for us to wear. I had a dress made out of a brown velvet evening dress which used to ride up inside my coat and I would be walking with my knickers showing. Mum made a nightdress for herself out of the lining. I used to walk about in the bedroom wearing blue and white high heeled satin court shoes about six sizes too big for me. I also still have some trinkets which they gave us. There are two small wooden clogs with Bruges written on them, a very small leather shoe decorated with red wool and a little leather note case with a badge on the front saying TURIET u BARDACH, VIENNA. There were other Austrian ladies in the village and Mrs Kelvin and her friend Olga came to work as cook and maid for Mrs Dillon-Robinson. They later went to work away in a school and Aunt Ruth corresponded with them for many years. There was Mrs Karbash and her son Rudi who was interned, also Mrs Kalivoda (I have no idea how you spell it). They were all 

If you would like to read more of this fascinating account of the war years then please go to the Ancestors Page: Daphne Stalley, Memories