Rachel Armand, daughter of Charles and Andries, married a Canadian Soldier in a French coastal town during the First World War. Their nine month old son was sleeping out in the courtyard of the farmhouse, when an allied bomb fell on his pram and killed him. Rachel's husband was killed too. No proof of their union remains, not even their names as the marriage and birth certificates were thrown out after Rachel died.
Rachel would prepare and deliver food to the English troops fighting on the beaches nearby. Here she met John Jackson and they married April 29th, 1919 in Marlow Parish Church, England. They came to England for a very short visit, so that Rachel could meet John's family, then return to France.
They ran a general store in St. Cecile, a village just a few miles from where they met. The front was a retail grocery that sold vegetables, sweets, and cheese made from the two goats' milk they kept to keep the grass down. At the back of the store was a big hall that served as a dance floor, and a bar where you could buy a drink. In the middle of the floor was a large stove and a trap door covering their well. Their four daughters Olive, Irene, Muriel and Dot were born in St. Cecile. Olive remembers being sent by the nurse to fetch hot water when Dot was born, and remembers her mother saying "what tiny feet she got".
One of the entertainments of that time were cock fights. Local villagers, wearing black berets and wooden clogs, smoking clay pipes, would gather in the courtyard outside the shop to lay bets on whose cock would win. To make the birds more aggressive they would give them alcoholic drinks and set them to tear their competitors apart.
The beach was a three minute walk from the house; the girls went shrimping every day and were often out to pick bunches of round grass that grew in the sand dunes on the beach. The grass would be dried and woven into chair seats.
Olive recalls one night when there was a terrible storm - thunder, lightning, rain, lashing against their windows. When they got up next morning they found many plaice stuck on the windows. It took some strength to pull them off, but when they did they enjoyed many meals.
People from surrounding village would visit the beaches on weekends to look for lead bullets. lead was valuable and could be sold for a fair price. One busy weekend a mine was triggered. Rachel ran to the beach tearing her petticoat into strips to make bandages.
The explosion created a huge crater and ladders were dropped to reach the injured.
One day Olive walked along the beach, when a villager who worked at the garage offered her a sweet. He took her by the hand and encouraged her to walk with him, then carried her back to the garage. There he began to fondle her. She was about five years old at this time and terrified. She screamed, he threw her into a car, hoisted the car in the air and left swiftly. Olive kept screaming until someone rescued her. The abductor was later tried and imprisoned for six years.
Rachel's parents had a farm three miles from St. Cecile. When you opened the front door there was a font where you dipped your hands in holy water (purchased from the Catholic Church) then made a sign of the cross before entering the house.
Rachel's father and his brothers were fisherman. One of them lost his ability to speak after he had been badly frost-bitten during one fishing trip.
Rachel's sister had seven sons, all of whom were killed in the 1914-18 war.
Olive started school in Boulange, seven miles from St. Cecile, before Rachel and John decided to move back to England. When Charles Harmand found out he was very angry, and a furious row between Rachel and her father broke out in the back hall, which Olive witnessed. Charles could not persuade Rachel to stay so in a fit of rage he lifted the door to the well and tried to push her down. There she would drown and would not be able to leave France. Olive screamed, her father rushed in and managed to save Rachel before she was thrown down.
When the Jackson's came to England they lived in John's mother's little cottage in Bovingdon Green for about four months, then on Trinity Avenue in Marlow. Later they rented a house at 24 Glade Road.
When the girls started school in England they were called "frogs" because they came from France. One particularly cruel and persistent tormentor, put many live frogs down Olive's blouse. She remembers going to Church every Sunday and hearing people say "Here come the Frogs!"
The local fishmonger slurred Rachel when she came to his shop to buy fish. She left and never returned and he lost a good customer, as this family coming from the coast, would have eaten a lot of fish.
French onion sellers would travel by ferry and bicycle to sell their onions in England. When they came to Marlow, Rachel would invite them in for food and a drink.
When John came home to find a row of bicycles parked outside the house, he was upset. To find his wife surrounded by frenchmen lost in conversation and laughter, he was annoyed, and told her to send them away. Rachel refused of course. These were friends who offered the few occasions she could chat in her native tongue.
The Jackson's stayed at 24 Glade Road until the girls grew up, married and left home and John Jackson died. Rachel continued to live there until she became quite frail and was moved to a smaller home on Deansfield Close.
September 7, 1999
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