大象传媒

I was born in May 1939. I remember the sound of the sirens, the drone of bombers, the black out curtains, playing in the cupboard under the stairs where my mother joined me when the siren went. I remember the large air raid shelter in the school grounds, which smelt of damp. We lived at the top of the hill in Coulsdon, Surrey where we stayed throughout the war. A bomb fell in the fields behind the houses opposite ours. The glass in our garage doors was shattered. I remember the sound of the doodlebugs, the whine then the silence. We had Canadian soldiers billeted near us and they gave parties for the local children.

My father, who was 33 when he signed up for the Royal Marines, trained to be an officer so that if he were killed my mother would get a better pension. He became a 2nd Lieutenant. I vaguely remember this man in uniform occasionally turning up on the doorstep. This was when he was on leave during his training. He went to war when I was 3 and came back thankfully when I was 7. When he left my mother said I wouldn't leave her side.

My father kept an itinerary of where he went. He was on the landing craft, not on D-Day, but the weeks after, on Juno beach ferrying in men and supplies. On D-Day he was sent on a decoy fleet going up the North Sea. He fought in France, North Africa, Italy and the Far East, Singapore, Malaya, Rangoon, Bombay. He was given 7 medals, which I treasure. He was also given a Japanese Officers sword. I still have his officer's stick and Sam Brown belt. He wore his beret in the garden until it disintegrated and he threw it away. I had his Royal Marine's badge made into a pendant.

He went to war classed A1 and came out A1 slightly deaf in one ear, caused they said by the coral in the seawater! He had no physical scars but emotionally he was a changed man. He could not speak of the war without becoming emotional and so he never told us much about his experiences. He did say it was a terrible experience but he would not have missed it. He told my mother that his batman (a lovely young lad) was lost over board. He had the onerous task of writing to his parents. On Juno beach he slept on a table in a tent totally exhausted. He woke to find the tent riddled with bullets but he was unharmed. In Bombay he said the rats were as big as cats! In Burma he had to take the place of an officer who was the worse for drink and lead an attack force into Rangoon. Luckily when he got there the "Japs" had gone. My mother said my father must have had a guardian angel!

He died in 1998 close to his 89th birthday. My mother died 6 weeks later. I miss them both.

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