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This story was submitted to the People War’s site by Clare Nelthorpe of CSV Media on behalf of Stan Miller and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

The milk round

I was 11 when the war broke out, I lived in a little village in Eyke in Suffolk. I had a part time job delivering milk in the mornings. One day I was cycling on my milk round, I heard machine gunfire above. I put my bicycle down against a grassy bank with the milk bottles still in the tray on the front, and I crouched in a ditch. When the gunfire was over, I got out of the ditch and found that several of the milk bottles were broken. I don’t know if it was the machine gunfire or what, but I had to got back to the farm and get more milk. The farmer was not happy.

Not such a safe place for evacuees

In this area we had a lot of evacuees from London, we had about 20 in our class, with the luxury of only one or two to a desk, when the evacuees came down we had three or four to a desk. But it wasn’t such a safe place for evacuees. One day school was finished for the day in a neighbouring village, an enemy plane dived down on them and gunned down a lot of them. After that evacuees were moved away. They left, but it was alright for us to remain behind!

Mechanic’s Frightening Moment

I joined up when I was 14 and a half. I was working on a farm at the time, but that life didn’t appeal to me. I wanted to become a mechanic, so I joined the army to learn a trade. I was at an army technical school in 1942, we were taught the trade. In 1944 before D-Day we were sent round the country, I was sent to Ashford in Kent, it was considered a frontline mechanic base. Repairing tanks, lorries, gun tractors, all sorts, whatever could be repaired. I worked in one of eight workshops.

One day I was sent into the turret of a tank, I was undoing the connections so we could remove it and get to work on it. Suddenly I flew out, there was the remains of a hand and forearm, it frightened me somewhat. We stayed at this camp for 8 months until there wasn’t much to do by this time, then went back to the other place in Arborfield, near Reading.

Before we left there it was when the doodle bugs came over we were standing there watching this doodle bug come over, it suddenly cut out, and started coming down, and we didn’t know where it was going to come down. We headed for a trench and we got to within 6 — 8 ft of the trench, there was an enormous explosion which pushed us into the trench, it knocked us straight off our feet. It had landed and exploded further away in the camp.

It felt good to me to be stationed with full blown men doing a full on war job, and I was helping them.

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