Piercefield Park During WW2 by George Francis


This article was uploaded by Nicholas Cleak at 22:26 22 January 2008

Piercefield Park During WW2 by George Francis An interesting aspect of the period concerned the use of Chepstow Racecourse. The entire property was requisitioned early in the war, the stables being converted into a Prisoner of War Camp for the German Army with a portion of St. Lawrence Hospital being set aside as a Prisoner of War Hospital where severely wounded prisoners were treated. It so happened that the Royal Army Medical Corps Colonel Commandant of the Hospital was the father of a friend of mine with whom I was at school. As a result of this I spent a considerable time up at St.Lawrence during the school holdays.

The whole of the Racecourse, Piercefield park and also Oak Gove were used for the storage of lancaster bombers prior to going into Squadron Service. The aircraft arrived on vehicles called “A Queen Mary” ( a very long low loader) were assembled and parked under the trees. The exciting part was when they left the Racecourse under their own power when passing into Squadron Service. A grass runway was constructed which stretched from the most northerly point of the Racecourse at St Arvans, through the centre of the course, over the Lions Lodge entrance and across to Filton. This was an extremely hazardous exercise as the runway was too short for practical purposes but, with the aircraft stripped down to the basic essentials, without any armament, just sufficient fuel to get across to Filton and only the pilot on board, it proved just possible. Unbelievably no accident took place and I remember watching from the Glos. side of the Wye the planes creeping over the lower end of the Racecourse, having just gained sufficient height. It was always possible to tell when this was taking place as the engines could be heard getting up to temperature before take off.

The Racecourse main buildings were used throughout by the Army, but immediately prior to D - Day, a battalion of US Army was in occupation and under training for the landings in North West France. Part of their training took in street fighting and Piercefield house was used for this purpose with live ammunition which, as might be imagined, did not exactly improve its structure. The Battalion was commanded by a Lieutenant Colonel Lucius Clay who subsequently became General Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff when President of the USA and whose ancestors by chance were the same Clay family who lived at Piercefield park from 1850 to afte the first World War, whereupon the Park became what was then the new Chepstow Racecourse.

Credits:
'WW2 People's War is an online archive of wartime memories contributed by members of the public and gathered by the BBC. The archive can be found at bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar'