大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer on behalf of Sylvia Latham and has been added to the site with her permission. Sylvia Latham fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I met Tom while I was working in the Hotels & Catering department of the Great Western Railway at Paddington Station. I was 19 and Tom was about the same age. It was 1941. Tom was called up and immediately sent to Canada to train as a pilot, returning a year later. By then I too had been called up and having been a Red Cross volunteer, joined the Civil Nursing Reserve based at Clayponds Hospital, South Ealing.

Despite our limited contact as a result of wartime restrictions, Tom and I got engaged in 1942 while he was posted to a Halifax heavy bomber squadron based at RAF Holme on Spalding Moor (76 Squadron?).

On the night of 18th November 1943, Tom鈥檚 Halifax was shot down whilst on a bombing raid somewhere over Germany. Tom was the only member of the crew to survive, escaping by Irvin parachute, thus becoming a member of the Caterpillar Club* and a prisoner of war in Stalag IVb. Tom was freed by the Russians in April 1945.

By this time, I was working as a Technical Assistant (F) at the 大象传媒 transmitter at Washford, Somerset, where by now I had met Joe. When he returned, Tom and I decided to go our separate ways, he back into the hotel business and me the 大象传媒. Joe and I were married in 1950.

* The Caterpillar Club was formed by a young American named Leslie Leroy Irwin who in 1919 demonstrated for the first time that it was possible to fall freely through the air without losing consciousness and open a parachute manually. Irwin joined forces with a silk garment manufacturer to form the Irwin Air Chute Company which began manufacturing safety parachutes. Membership of the Caterpillar Club is still limited to those people whose lives have been saved in an emergency by an Irwin parachute. The club takes its name from the caterpillar, the silken threads from which parachutes of the time were woven, and the way a caterpillar lowers itself safely down to earth by a silken thread it has spun. On being accepted into the club, members are presented with a membership card and a gold pin in the shape of a caterpillar the back of which is engraved with their name and rank.

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