Island Life Magazine Ltd December 2009/January 2010 | Page 34

life

INTERVIEW

Photo: Barbara pictured with her mother Mabel in 1941
column”, a body of potential spies and traitors.

avoid being spotted by the pilots of a couple

Consequently the slogan “Careless talk costs

of planes coming in their direction. When the

lives” was taken very seriously and we learnt to

planes had passed, my mother and aunt found

trust no one, even people we thought we knew

that only their heads had been hidden, the rest

well.

of their bodies being well out into the road. We

This, of course, tended to emphasise our

later discovered that the two planes had been

isolation – for we were very isolated, special

one of ours chasing one of theirs, and that the

permission having to be obtained before one

enemy plane had crashed on Bowcombe Down.

could cross the Solent in either direction.

So our two ostriches had been in no danger at

Letters and telephone calls were censored,

all!

too. If an unwise comment was made during a
telephone conversation a warning buzz would

Odds and Ends

sound: a second slip-up would cause the call to

PLUTO (the Pipe Line Under the Ocean) was one

be disconnected. After a heavy raid on Cowes

way in which the Island played an important

one lady, whom I knew well, told her sister on

part in the eventual invasion of France in 1944.

the mainland “Poor old Cowes caught it last

This pipe line, which carried essential fuel oil

night”. That call was immediately cut!

to our troops on the continent, went out from
Shanklin and Sandown seafronts. At Shanklin,

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Ostriches

in order to mask the preparatory work from any

But life went on, and there is one picture in my

enemy reconnaissance planes, clever advantage

mind which still makes me smile; my mother

was taken of the severely bomb-damaged

and one of her sisters, out blackberrying along

seafront hotels in the hope that any activity

the Calbourne Road, diving into a hedge to

would be presumed to be an attempt at