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Don Littlechild
One of the nicest things about doing this Parish Profile is the privilege of learning more about a person one has only known superficially for many years. Such is the case with Don Littlechild – I really knew little about him other than that he was the devoted husband of dear Gwen, who died last year. Many people will remember the two of them sitting in their deckchairs on the lawn outside their bungalow in Mortlock Street, just gently watching the world go by. Don was born in 1921 in East Terrace at the top of Drury Lane. His father had served in the first World War and been a Prisoner of War for 2 years. Don’s mother died when he was 9 and for a period he and his brother Walter went to live with a grandmother and aunts in Dolphin Lane with two cousins who had also lost their mother. Grandma and aunts took in washing. Eventually his father remarried and Don and Walter gained 6 half brothers and 3 half sisters, so it was quite a large family group. The boys attended the village school in Mortlock Street under Mr. Aldridge and then Mr. Varley, Daphne Hagger’s father. Don liked school although, as he pointed out, everyone had considerable respect for their elders and for the police so bad behaviour was not really an issue! He left school at 14 and got a job at the Home & Colonial Grocery store in Royston where he worked up to 54 hours a week for ten shillings! (50p) He was given a tricycle and was responsible for delivering to Oddsey and Ashwell, Therfield, Bassingbourn and Kneesworth, Chipping and of course, Melbourn. He would be given a lift up Red Lion Hill in a van and at some of the other hills he would need a helping hand to push the loaded cycle. Coming downhill was easy! He delivered the groceries and then wrote down the order for the following week – very few people had a telephone. In the first year he would cycle home for lunch but after a winter of heavy snows, he used to take sandwiches to work. He enjoyed weighing out the groceries (nothing was pre-packed in those days) and every Friday he would work until 10 p.m. stacking the shelves and every Saturday the shop did a stocktake, often until 11 at night. When he was l7 he and Walter decided to enlist, joining the Royal Fusilliers at Hounslow where they were known for being inseparable – indeed, the Daily Mirror published an article about them with a photograph of the two ‘Melbourne’ boys looking very smart and handsome. When the war started in 1939 he was still under 20 and was not included in the first draft of soldiers sent abroad, so he missed Dunkirk. Stationed at Dover, he was batman to an officer and had his first and only dealings with a motor car, when he accidentally put a car into reverse and jolly nearly shot over the White Cliffs into the Channel. He never tried to drive again, trusting only in two wheels.
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Eventually in 1942 he was sent out to the Middle East, stopping off for a few days’ leave in Cape Town and Bombay before going to Basra, then on to Baghdad with the Tenth Corps in Kirkup before joining the 8th army in North Africa. Life in the desert was hard, but good British humour often helped them through. They ate rather a lot of American M & V (tins of meat and vegetables) which were actually rather good but after a prolonged period of nothing but MV, it became known as Military Vomit ! Don was wounded by a sniper at Salerno, had an operation on the beach and was later put on a hospital ship to Tripoli then had yet another operation in Port Said. He spent three months there and was sent back to active service on 31st December 1943. Unfortunately, only seventeen days later his unit came under heavy fire at the river Garigliana and he was wounded twice and lay in a shed for three days before he could be taken behind the lines where he spent four months in yet another hospital. He was then shipped home, spending a further 3 months in hospital in Cambridge. That put paid to his active service life, but the excitement was not over! Don was part of a guard group looking after German prisoners who were being sent to Boston in America. Whilst there he had a week in New Jersey and a couple of days in New York! Not a bad bit of globetrotting for a Melbourn lad still under 25! He had a cabin on the way out, but coming back on the Amsterdam the ship was packed with American troops coming over for the final push. Until his discharge in May 1946. he was supervising a PoW camp in Abergevenny. Finally, it was home to Melbourn. Don soon got a job at The Rubber Company in Letchworth, where he spent the rest of his working life. Firstly he travelled by train, but then Walter (who was working for an engineering
