Profile

profile 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. 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

firm in Letchworth) got a motorcycle and they travelled on that. When Walter, who was on the Reserve List, was called up to serve in the Korean war Don travelled with Sid King, who later got a car and so he motored in style.

Meanwhile, in 1946 Gwen had moved from Clevedon to Melbourn to work at The Lodge as a child minder/home help. She became friendly with Don’s sister Sylvia and it wasn’t long before Don and she were courting. They would go to the cinema in Cambridge on a Saturday night (there was a late bus home in those days) or take a bike ride and have a drink in a pub. They were married in 1948, moving into a one up one down cottage next to The Red Cow. In 1950 Robert was born followed by Michael in 1954. Soon after they moved to a nice big house with a large garden in Portway, where they stayed until their move to the bungalow in Mortlock Street 10 years ago.

Both sons went to Melbourn Primary School like their father, passing their 11+ and going on to school in Cambridge. Both were active in the Scout movement. Rob went to Manchester College of Commerce and became an accountant, and now has his own business whilst Michael had 3 years at Bradford University and one year at Bonn University doing European Studies and German. Gwen was immensely proud of her two boys, both now married and living in St. Neots and London.

Of the original large family Sylvia and Tom died and sister Joyce emigrated to New Zealand and then moved to Australia; Don and Gwen and several other members of the family have made the long journey to visit her, Walter now lives opposite the old surgery in Orchard Road. Don took early retirement at the age of 64.

Gwen worked for many years for the Lupton family and they would spend holidays at the Lupton’s holiday home in North Wales. Gwen had beaten breast cancer and then bowel cancer, but her health deteriorated and in the last couple of years of her life she had great difficulty eating. Don was a devoted husband and carer, everyone admired him for his devotion to his wife of over 50 years. Don paid tribute to the District nurses who were so kind to Gwen, and of course to Rob and Mike who supported them so well, and still do - there is never a week goes by without one or other of the boys turning up with a great big casserole (leaving something to be warmed up on Monday) and the whole family are shortly going off to Sardinia together. To this end, Don has just had his passport renewed ! Still globetrotting at 87!

Don fills his days with housework and cooking, doing jigsaws and reading. The house is neat as a pin – Gwen would be pleased! He likes television and looks forward to the Thursday Self Help lunches and to Bingo nights at the British Legion. His old great love of gardening is still evident in the neat and colourful front garden, but these days he puts all his efforts into home made wine. Concentrating nowadays on making Hock, he used to make barley, rhubarb and beetroot wine and once he made dandelion wine. He put on the label D.P standing for dandelion petals, but having stood at the window in Portway watching a large Alsatian dog running round the field and cocking his leg, he put another D.P on the label, and called it Double D.P wine! I’ll leave it to your imagination!

In this modern-day climate necessitating complete transparency and honesty in declaring the acceptance of monies or goods, I must confess that I was given (and gratefully accepted) a bottle of rather wicked-looking Hock – I am assured no Alsatians have been near it! Mavis Howard

According to a new U.N. report, the global warming outlook is much worse than originally predicted. Which is pretty bad when they originally predicted it would destroy the planet.

President Bush has a plan. He says that if we need to, we can lower the temperature dramatically just by switching from Fahrenheit to Celsius

Positive proof of global warming!

18th Century 1900 1950 1970 1980 1990 2008 Global Warming or Climatic Claptrap

The earth’s getting warmer, that’s certainly true, (Though it’s hard to believe when your fingers are blue). It shouldn’t surprise as it’s happened before –And it probably did for the poor dinosaur. Now here is a problem that’s hard to explain, If it happened before then mankind’s not to blame For in days long ago we were thin on the ground And we didn’t pollute so the theory’s unsound. So why are we told greenhouse gas is to blame –Could it possibly be a political claim? There’d certainly be quite a hullabaloo If it were shown not to be due to poor CO2. No millions in taxes would come from the nation If support was assigned to a new explanation Like earth’s changing orbit or solar activity, Volcanoes or icecaps or oceans’ motivity. If we were enlightened – if only we knew We then could breathe out and form more CO2!