John Luff and John Woodford on Wartime

Lisa: How much did life revolve around the sea then, when you were kids?

John L: Well, my parents had a beach hut down at Ducie. I don’t know if you know where Ducie is? If you go down the Harbour and go towards the Lifeboat Station, the first bit of beach you come to is Ducie, D U C I E, and we had a hut down there and we always had a boat so we were.

When I left Ryde School, I went to Sandown and I travelled on the train because the train was still running from Bembridge, and I used to get off the train opposite where the Spithead Hotel was and walk along the beach and mother would be there with tea and have a swim and we lived on the beach in the summer.

John W: But during the War, we weren’t supposed to be allowed on the beach, it was forbidden to go on the beach, but we did, of course, being boys and we used to walk on the beach to see what we could find because there was all sorts of flotsam and jetsam come up wasn’t there? Bits and pieces that might have been useful but whatever … how early you went in the morning, someone else had been before us. You could see their footprints.

Lisa Were the beached barricaded?

John L: Yes. There’s a picture in there of my sister and I on the beach and it was like scaffolding all the way round. It went right from St Helen’s right round to Whitecliff. All the way round. And at the end of the War, they just dropped it, they didn’t take it away and there are still bits of it there now. They just unshackled it and just dropped it there.

John W: You can still see it sometimes.

John L: They left little gaps for the fishermen to get through with their boats, you could still get in and out of the Harbour but only a narrow gap, and then different places along the beach ‘cos there’s fishermen at different points all the way round the coast right round to Forelands and they used to leave little gaps in it so that they only used small boats and so they left a big enough gap for the boats get and still go fishing.