Reminiscences of Bob Booker, the son of a CWGC Gardener My father was a war graves gardener based at Dernancourt during the late fifties and the early sixties, Dad was almost too young for WW2. But couldn’t be called up anyway as he was in a reserved occupation working in a factory on war equipment which he had been doing since leaving school. He was called up immediately after the war when he was both old enough, and the reserved occupations ended. He then served in Malaya during the Malayan campaign. After his national service he never returned to the factory but went into gardening. As a gardener he replied to a War Graves advert for gardeners. He was offered a job, and so we moved from Cornwall to Dernancourt in France in 1959 and we lived as a family on the other side of the railway bridge from the cemetery with just one farm house between us and the railway line. We also went to school in Dernancourt village. The posts which supported a chain link fence along the length of our back garden at Dernancourt were old British narrow gauge rails which had been used for moving war supplies somewhere and after the war had been recycled into fence posts. http://ww1cemeteries.com/ww1frenchcemeteries/dernancourt.htm
