The Yanks are here and they’re drinking all the beer . . . Turning back the clock on Moretonhampstead during the Second World War
Life in a Dartmoor community suddenly changed 75 years ago, with the arrival of about 1,500 American men. For the next few months the mainly white US army officers were billeted in Moretonhampstead, while the mainly black GIs built and lived in a tented camp on nearby Mardon Common. As part of the current Heritage Lottery funded ‘Moor than meets the Eye’ project, Moretonhampstead History Society has worked with the Mardon Commoners to uncover, literally and by research, what they were about and how it affected the lives of Moretonians.
Mardon Common covers about 450 acres. About 800 to 1,000 ft above sea level it has been traditionally used by local farms exercising their commoners’ rights for rough grazing and cutting bracken for winter bedding. Today as it is grazed and ‘swaled’ rather less; there are more trees, gorse bushes and sprawls of bracken that have had to be cleared outside the nesting season, revealing the remains of the American activities.
The predominant feature uncovered is an earthen embankment following the curve of a contour line for about 600 yards from the south-east corner to the south-west corner of the moor. It is flanked in places by long wide trenches or ‘scrape outs’ that supplied the earth to build up to a level of about 4ft, while in one section there is a cutting between banks of a similar height. About two-thirds of the way along there is a significant gap across a small road that for good reasons has since been called ’bailey bridge’, though none survives. Accompanying research shows this embankment was what the Americans called variously a ‘cordway’, a ‘palingway’ or a ‘treadway’. Logs or strips of paling were laid along the top of the embankment for wheeled and caterpillared vehicles to move over. The earth-moving dozer tractors of the 433 Engineer Dump Truck Co and the amphibian tractors of 539 Ordnance Heavy Maintenance Co that worked and practised there probably explain memories of ‘trains’ being seen on Mardon by young locals who snuck up there.
Alongside the embankment and scattered around the moor are masses of slit trenches or ‘foxholes’, dug to give some protection on open land from aerial attack. V-shaped ones overlooking the approaches to the moor were probably for small anti-aircraft firearms and four large pits along the ridge known as Mardon Down contained enfilading artillery or mortars to hit the enemy ‘in the crossfire’. More difficult to explain are longer trench systems some with iron pins along them (for holding corrugated iron support earths?), that are more reminiscent of the previous world war. A few small quarries also remain where dirt paths and green lanes were upgraded to tarmac roads, although the Americans’ suggestion to ‘straighten’ the present A382 from Bovey Tracey unfortunately remains largely unfulfilled. Small personal items such as Zippo lighters, K rations cutlery and instant coffee packets ‘made in Indiana’ have also been found over the years but as yet none of the Harley Davidson motor bikes supposedly buried there!
There have also been finds of beach pebbles that bounced off the military vehicles as they came up the narrow lanes from the main depot at Torquay, where parts of the US 29thInfantry Division were assembled and trained for D-Day and the invasion of France. The troops on Mardon were combat engineers; their slogan ‘We keep ‘em movin’summed up their role in repairing and building means of communication for the infantry and artillery units, such as railways, roads, bridges and tunnels – hence the earthworks on Mardon.
How did this affect Moretonians? Apart from grumbling about the pubs running out of beer there seems to have been remarkably little friction. Perhaps it helped that the town has always been a cross-roads with lots of outside contact and a history of previously welcoming parole prisoners in the Napoleonic war, a New Zealand force a century later and evacuees from the London Blitz. They enjoyed listening to the GI’s jazz band at dances, being given tins of fruit and candy bars, rides in their jeeps and sneaking up to see Joe Louis, the world heavyweight boxing champion, fight a demonstration match on Mardon. In turn they introduced their ‘American visitors’, as they were known, to fish and chips, pasties and rough cider.
The main friction was between white and black GIs - following a violent incident in the town centre, whites and blacks were only allowed into the town on particular and different nights of the week. Moretonians are proud that they stood up against the racism. Mrs Wotton who ran a servicemen’s canteen on Cross Street recalled 50 years later that some white soldiers refused to eat alongside their black colleagues. She told them she ‘didn’t care if anyone was black, or white or purple’, they should eat together or leave. They left.
392ndEngineer Service Regiment General, the principal unit trained on Mardon, fought in all the major campaigns in France and Germany between July 1944 and August 1945 to gain the Meritorious Service Unit Plaque for its ‘superior performance’ in helping to win the war.
Moretonhampstead is also proud of the heritage that remains on Mardon from the part it played in preparing for that victory. It will be featured as part of a forthcoming exhibition in the town – see What’s On Extrafor details.
Bill Hardiman
Chairman
Moretonhamsptead History Society