大象传媒

Rose and Rand Austen celebrated their Emerald Wedding in 2004. Their stories are told in 鈥淲e have a Story to Tell鈥� and Memories of Wartime Westgate. Both had narrow escapes from bombs that fell in Thanet. Rand went to join King鈥檚 Royal Rifle Corps and served in North Africa, Italy and Greece. He was expecting to be sent to the Far East after the war in Europe was over, but landed in Folkestone on VJ Day to be told that was off! He later served with the British Army of Occupation on the German/Danish border. He retained his copy of the 鈥淪pecial Order of the Day鈥� dated 2 May 1945, the day when the Italian Army laid down its arms and has allowed it to be copied.

Rose鈥檚 Story
I was twelve years old at the outbreak of the Second World War. When the government decided to evacuate all children in areas of risk the children of Thanet were evacuated, my father was in a reserved occupation so had to stay in Thanet, so my mother and father decided we should all stay together and take our chances. This also saw the end of my education as Lausanne School, which I attended, was closed during the evacuation along with all the other schools in Thanet.
In 1941 three bombs fell onto our road (Selbourne Road, Margate, Monday 12 May). One landed in our garden. My mother, sister, brother and myself were buried in our dugout shelter in the garden, worrying all the time about our father, who was in the house at the time. He was safe and we were saved from harm by a blanket my mother had hung over the doorway, as shrapnel embedded itself in it, having penetrated the heavy wooden door. When the raids were bad on Manston we used to sleep in the Anderson shelter.
One day out early in the evening with my sister we were machine-gunned. We were very scared, but fortunately not hurt. We were also very lucky when a firebomb came in the bedroom window, as fortunately it did not explode.
I also saw the little ships returning from Dunkirk, bringing our troops into Margate from the beaches at Dunkirk. My mother鈥檚 brother was one of the soldiers rescued and brought back into Margate.

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