大象传媒

My mother Betty Bennett, now 84 has often told the following story about her father Albert Kingham:

My granddad fought all through the 1st world war but when world war two broke out he was too old to enlist. He was most indignant at this and told my grandma and my mum and uncles (his daughter and sons) that he was going to dye his hair so that he could pass himself off as a much younger man. No one believed him until one day he came home with a shock of red hair. This ruse didn't work with the recruiting office needless to say but did provide much needed laughter. Not to be entirely outdone my granddad volunteered for incendiary watch duty. In the beginning the incendiaries did not explode on impact so it enabled him to quickly pull them off buildings before they could do further damage. However, this one day the incendiary that he had grabbed hold of exploded in his face, hurling him through the roof of the building where he had been working. He was taken to Coventry and Warwickshire Hospital for emergency treatment but while on the operating table the hospital took a direct him throwing him on the floor of the theatre. He was evacuated to Evesham Old People's Hospital but my grandma was not informed of this in all the ensuing confusion. My mum and her brother Jack, on leave from the Navy, set out to try and find where granddad has been taken. They enquired at Leamington Spa Hospital first but drew a blank. While in Leamington Spa a group of people were laughing and making derisive comments about the clothes that my mum and uncle were wearing. Their house in Smith Street has been bombed and they only had the clothes that they were wearing at the time and borrowed long army greatcoats. These people asked my uncle where they had come from and when my uncle replied 'Coventry' they were silenced and ashamed because everyone had heard by then about the terrible pounding Coventry had just taken from the German bombers. Granddad was eventually located at Evesham. At first they couldn't find him but they had just walked by a man in a hospital bed with a face covered in gentian violet, a treatment for serious burns during the second world war, and he said "Betty", "Jack", "its me". Despite his injuries, granddad made a full recovery.

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