大象传媒

This story was submitted by Raymond Atkins at the 大象传媒 Three Counties Archive Day in Luton. He agrees to the story being included on the site, and understands the terms and conditions.

I lived in the hamlet of River, behind the town of Dover in Kent. Suddenly one day we found metal stakes being stuck in the ground, and huge camouflage netting put up over the valley. The area under the nets was soon filled with American tanks and vehicles. I remember that the whole valley seemed to be full of the noise from their radios.

I soon discovered that you could get 鈥済oodies鈥� from the Americans, and became friendly with some of them. One tank sergeant used to have a commandoes bike strapped to the turret. He used to use it to go to the local pub in the evening. He used to complain that it didn鈥檛 work too well uphill, but it took me while to realise that the bike might not have been to blame for any problems getting back to camp!

When the tanks moved off to take part in the Normandy landings, he gave me the bike. I very proudly pushed it home, but my mum was very cross. She maintained that it was 鈥淕overnment property鈥� and that I had to give it back. She made me chase after the convoy; when we caught them up the Sergeant had to shout out a reassurance that it was ok for me to keep it.

There were so many vehicles in the valley that it took them a full day to drive out. You should have seen the state of the road afterwards 鈥� they had to re-surface it.

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