大象传媒

This story in submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Jenny Ford on behalf of Tom Atkinson and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

When the War started I was 12陆, my father had been gassed in the First World War and had told me about it. The Sunday morning War was declared we had an air raid warning and a flight of 3 Wellington bombers flew over Bedford. I was interested in planes and knew they were British. We were more interested in what Chamberlain was saying on the radio.

I was at Queen鈥檚 Park Boys School and I can remember vividly some Jewish refugees from Germany who came to our school. They were so intelligent and artistic it left us in awe. School carried on much the same; we were issued with our gas masks and identity cards. We had to dig up the school playing field for their 鈥淒ig For Victory鈥� scheme to grow our own vegetables, to supplement our very meagre rations (although at the time we were the most healthy we had ever been). Bedford was very quiet and the first year of the war was a kind of phoney war. My elder brother was a Territorial and had to go straight away. He just missed going to Dunkirk. When the B.E.F was evacuated from I can remember some of my friends鈥� elder brothers were flying in the R.A.F, and would often 鈥渂uzz鈥� their parents鈥� homes. In fact in 1941 one Sunday lunchtime an Aero Cobra Fighter was giving us a wonderful show of aerobatics, suddenly a dreadful noise came from it and it crashed in the middle of Bedford quite near where the Police Headquarters are now. The pilot, an ex Bedford School Boy who was giving his parents a show was killed. The Aero Cobra had been supplied on 'Lease Lend' by the U.S and was not a very successful plane.

A column of soldiers came marching down our road and we had three thrust on us, for mother to look after. They were 3 good guys and became very friendly. They were local boys in training. I enjoyed being able to handle their rifles and they had very large bayonets on them. We kept in touch afterwards. One of them was a farmer鈥檚 boy from Colmworth. I remember once I thought I had done something wrong to one of their rifles, the three of them grabbed me and put some pepper in my nose and hung me head down from their bedroom window. It taught me a lesson, not to play with things I didn鈥檛 understand. By this time the war had entered the serious phase and air raids had begun in earnest. London was being bombed at night. We could stand on Allen鈥檚 Bridge and watch the flashes of bombs exploding, the fires and the searchlights. It was so clear in those days as there was very little pollution. Bedford itself got off quite lightly, but on one night the Germans bombed Coventry which was a massive raid, brilliantly moonlit, Bedford was used as a navigation point by the German bombers flying from Northern France and they were coming backward and forward all night long. About 9pm we were all playing outside and we knew German planes by the sound of their engines. There was a massive explosion and a huge flash, this being caused by a parachute mine. We had a rough idea where it had landed and we walked along Ford End Road where glass was strewn everywhere from shop windows. I managed to obtain a piece of parachute cord, and found that the mine itself had landed on an old rubbish dump, normally one of those mines would cause wide destruction, but apart from windows and roofs being blown off no one was killed. This was about 1941 the first big concentrated raid. I was at Allen鈥檚 one day and we had an early morning air raid on Bedford, it was a dreadful morning and I had just walked outside, a German bomber flew in just below the cloud level and dropped a stick of bombs which fell in the railway sidings at Bedford Station, one hit a sweet shop in Midland Road and another one cut a huge house in Ashburnham Road in two. Later on when I met my wife to be, she said she was on a bus that morning going to school, and the conductress told them to get under the seats. The bus had stopped because of the bomber. Two of the bombs fell each side of the bridge so she was very lucky. One fell on a popular little sweet shop, which would have been full of children buying sweets, except that it happened on closing day, Thursday.

You can still see to this day where the building was cut in two. I actually saw the German bomber that morning and we later heard that he had been shot down near the East Coast on the way home. The pilot survived and after the war was living just outside Bedford.

I joined the Air Training Corps at 15, and was lucky enough to have my first flying experiences at R.A.F Cranfield. They were training pilots there during the war, and we were flying with pupil-pilots with an instructor, in twin engined Beaafort Torpedo Bombers. We were doing what they termed 鈥淐ircuits and Bumps鈥� which was take off, a circuit of the Aerodrome and landing, all morning and afternoon, and was often a very frightening experience! I thought I would never see my mother again! (The WAAF who issued the parachutes would say 鈥渉ere you are, here鈥檚 your 鈥榗hute, if it doesn鈥檛 work come back and we鈥檒l issue you with another one!鈥�) Aviation today still remains my main interest in life. I had been in reserve occupation as an engineering apprentice.

I volunteered for the R.A.F in 1944, (as my elder brother had flown 25 operations) but I was turned down, so I volunteered for the Army, I did my training in the infantry and became a marksman with Sten Gun and Bren Guns, and the Rifle, and was in London on V.E Day, and shortly afterwards we were shipped off to India for further training for the invasion of Malaya. Fortunately for us the Atom Bomb ended the War, and we became the occupation forces after the German surrender.

We had escaped the war, but we were now involved in the Chinese Communist War in Malaya. It lasted until 1954, but I then returned to England in 1948.

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