大象传媒

Dunkirk

In 1940 I helped the billeting office with Mr Beattie Deputy Town Clerk and Chief Billeting Officer. One day we came into the Old Town Hall in the morning to find the corridor lined with soldiers sitting on the concrete, lying down or moving about. We discovered they were from a Scots regiment but nobody told us why they were there. We had not heard of Dunkirk, but they had been brought there overnight and had gone next morning just as quietly and mysteriously as they had come. You never asked too many questions in war time and perhaps they were held to silence. Of course we eventually heard of Dunkirk. So many odd things happened in war time that one never took much notice.

General De Gaulle

Our school asked if there were any French speakers that would like to go to Olney to visit the Free French Forces. It must have been the summer of 1940. It was a garden party in the grounds of some big house there. We cycled there and were talking to a group of French soldiers when this tall gaunt man approached and and said something to the soldiers which we didn't understand. They didn't look too happy. He was cross looking and pompous. He nodded and half bowed to us without a smile, clicked his heels and walked away. We did not really understand what he had said, and at that time did not know who he was. The soldiers looked a bit sheepish but went on talking to us. They were courteous and friendly. We got the impression of a haughty unpleasent man and the soldiers didn't seem too impressed with him either. We asked them who he was and they said something like "Goalie" (meaning to us football or hockey). We kept in touch with some of the soldiers for a while and when I was stationed in Colnbrook Bucks one of them came to see me one weekend, but we lost touch and never saw them again. It was only after some time that we knew that de Gaulle was in charge of the free French.

Duchess Of Kent (Princess Marina)

I was at a wedding in Ivor Bucks of the Duchess of Kent's land girl at a small village church. Waiting for them to come out of the church, we lined up and I stood next to the Duchess. I got a shock to see her make up, which was so thick. I had never seen anyone with very much make-up on before. The two children stood next to me also and Princess Alexandra was so excited she kept jumping up and down and running around. There were very few people there, and there didn't seem to be any security people around either. As far as I can remember Princess Alexandra was about four or five years old, but she was completely natural and her mother did not seem to keep her under control. The now Duke of Kent was very quiet and well behaved.

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