大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer from Lincolnshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Peter Ashley and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Ashley fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

My family came from Lincolnshire. For some time my father was stationed at Tangmere in Sussex. He wanted somewhere for my mum and me to stay so it was arranged that we could stay with a local family. This was Betty鈥檚 family. Betty was born at the outbreak of war as a 7 year old, I used to push her in her pram when we went out for walks. When my family eventually left Tangmere, our two families kept in regular contact and years later Betty and I got married.

I remember one particular Sunday afternoon in Lincoln. It was one of the few times Lincoln was attacked by bombers. We were up at Lincoln County Hospital on Marshall Ward to visit my grandmother. All around the hospital there were blast walls built to protect the building. My dad was home on leave at the time. The sirens went off and no sooner had they sounded when a Messerschmitt 110 cane flying low over us. He attacked the hospital and my dad grabbed me and pushed me behind the wall and landed on top of me and told me not to move. I remember being very frightened.

When we were in Tangmere there were some Italian prisoners of war working on the roads nearby. We had an outside toilet and there was a wall of corrugated iron fencing leading to it. This was as protection from any shooting from planes since this type of activity was quite frequent in the south coastal area. The houses were in a raised area of land so were quite vulnerable to attack. On the other side of this fencing, the prisoners of war were working on the roads. A German aeroplane came flying over the top of the nearby hill, dropped low so it was difficult to see, and came up firing. I didn鈥檛 see the aeroplane coming but I was walking out to the toilet. My dad rushed out and knocked me to the ground as the plane opened fire. When I got up again, there were a couple of rows of bullet holes in the corrugated iron fencing. They had been aiming at the road-workers, thinking that they were British, not realising they were in fact prisoners of war.

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