David Woodman

David Woodman grew up in a cottage just along from Tenniscourt Road near Kingswood to the East of Bristol. He was 6 years old when the Americans first arrived in 1943 and built their camp nearby. The camp comprised of a series of huts in a triangular field with the point at what is now the roundabout where Tenniscourt Road and New Cheltenham Road meet with the southern end bordered by Dawn Rise.

^{Location of the camp. This map is post-war and shows where houses were built at the site (from KYP Bristol)}

His father, Frank Woodman, was a leading fireman at Kingswood so got to know the soldiers well. They would turn up in the evening, up to 8 of them at a time, bringing with them plenty of alcohol. My Woodman remembers how they would stay up with his father chatting all evening and having a good time.

Like many British children during the war, Mr Woodman knew that the G.I.s had access to many more provisions than their parents and could be very generous. He and his school friends would walk through the back alleyway and wait for them. As they passed, the boys would call out ‘Have you got any gum, chum?’. They’d say ‘No, but here’s thruppence each to spend’ and the boys would be over the moon. Other locals remember them walking down New Cheltenham Road and asking the very same question.

The G.I.s stationed at the camp were a mix of black and white soldiers indicating that it was possibly part of the Transportation Corps or other logistical service. While the Kingswood children found them all to be friendly, some locals recalled racial violence breaking out in the Midland pub and Station Hotel in Warmley. In Bristol, pubs were frequently designated either for white or black soldiers to avoid conflict; perhaps this wasn’t the case further out of the city.

^{Transportation Corps soldiers with their trucks (not Bristol) (US National Archives)}

Another Kingswood lad remembers how the G.I.s would play with them on nearby Siston Common by the Horseshoe pub led by a Corporal Clay. Others would see them playing baseball, which was new and a curiosity to the English locals. Baseball also provided entertainment for children watching on Tenniscourt Fields.

^{Siston Common looking towards the Horseshoe pub}

Mr Woodman recalls this being a particularly happy time and a great adventure. Unlike in some places in Bristol, the G.I.s remained at their camp after D-Day but departed with the end of the war in Europe. The huts were evidently pulled down and housing was built in their place in the late 1940s. Other locals remembered Nissan huts surviving at the garage on nearby Fisher Road for some time but, sadly, they now appear to have gone too.

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