Words and portrait John Allen
Other photographs by kind permission of David Knight

For the March edition of The CM17 Connection you might remember that I wrote an article about the history of RAF Matching Green. And I asked if there was anyone who had memories of growing up and living in Harlow that they would like to share with the other readers of our magazine.

As a result, David Knight – extelegram boy, ex-soldier and expostman – contacted Lorraine and offered to tell us his story. I went along to talk to him, and this is what he told me.

Growing up and going to school
I was born in Old Harlow in 1926, in Bromleys Farm. It’s now part of the industrial estate, on the old Netteswell Road towards Burnt Mill and Great Parndon. There were thirteen children, although two of them died. My father was a farmer and we lived in a bungalow on the farm. Old Harlow was a very nice village then, but we have never regretted the new town coming. It’s made a lot of difference for us.

The family moved to Churchgate Street and then to Manor Road just before the war started. I went to Fawbert and Barnards school in the old town - the school is still there – and I left in 1940.

Out to work
When I was about to leave somebody mentioned the possibility of going into the post offi ce as a telegram boy, and I thought, ‘That’d be just my job.’ In fact it was the only job I was ever offered at the time. I liked the idea of wearing a uniform, you just felt as if you were somebody. It was stable job, it wasn’t much money. But for four years of the war I had an important job, delivering good and bad news.

I was never allowed to know what was in the telegram, but I was warned before I went out if there was something in it that wasn’t good, but I never knew what it actually said because the telegram was sealed in a little yellow envelope. But if it was a greetings telegram, then it would be sealed in a gold envelope.

When people see you when you go up to their door, well you never know how they will react, but as soon as they saw a telegram boy I suppose they always thought the worst.

There’s a photo of me as a telegram boy taken when I was about fi fteen. I was delivering a telegram to a wedding. It was a man who was getting married just before he joined up. But I know he came home again at the end of the war.

I worked from the post offi ce in Old Harlow, it was built about three years before the war started, but it’s still there, on the corner, by Chippingfi eld, but it’s now in a terrible state. At the time I was the only telegram boy and I covered the whole area – all of Old Harlow for most of the week. But on Wednesdays I had to cover for Potter Street, Burnt Mill and Great Parndon, because their little offi ce was early closing on Wednesday; and on Thursday I often went out to Matching Green, because their offi ce closed on that day. So if anything needed to be delivered, the telegram would be sent to my offi ce and I would take it out on a bike to deliver it. And it’s about six or seven miles out there. I cycled a few miles in my time.

Joining up
I had to join up in 1944, when I was eighteen. I joined the RAF and did my training in Skegness and I was posted to an air force base in Tunbry in Scotland. But then, after about a month, the War Offi ce decided that there were too many in the RAF and navy and we were transferred into the Army. I only ever did my basic training in the RAF. I trained with the 9th Buffs in Enniskillen but I fi nished up with the Essex Regiment. We were over in France and Germany and that’s where I was when the war ended. I was in Nuremberg. Nothing could have pleased me more when I was in the camp, it was around the time of the last big push for Berlin, and somebody told me, “The war’s fi nished,” and I thought, “Thank goodness for that”.

Coming home
When I was demobbed from the Army in 1947, I came home and I became a postman. I went back to that same building near Chippingfi eld in Old Harlow where I had once been a telegram boy, and I worked there until they moved the post offi ce into the new town centre.

Retirement
I retired in 1991, so I was a postman for over forty years, mainly around Matching Green, but not on my bike this time. They taught me to drive and they gave me a van. And it’s because of that that I know nearly everybody in Matching Green and Matching Tye. Matching is a lovely friendly place and my wife, Nora, and we still go out there. We both sing in the choir at Matching Church, and we are also members of the Matching Green Friendly Club. It’s a club for the over 60’s and we meet on the fi rst Monday of every month in the village hall in Matching Tye.

Nora and I got married in 1949 and we were given one of huts at Moor Hall to live in. During the war, the huts had been part of an ammunition dump; they used to supply the guns in London from there. But after the war, people lived there, and Nora and I were given number 13. We stayed there for two years before moving to Manor Road and then to The Hoo – where we’ve been for fi fty-six years.

Where we are now, in The Hoo, we are quite separated from the town, it’s roughly three miles from our house. But we like all of Harlow, I don’t mind any of it, we take it as it comes.

David, thanks for telling me the story of your life. It’s been a real pleasure meeting you.