大象传媒

Last Wednesday, the 10th November 2004, my wife and I were meeting two of our six grandchildren from their Primary School at Chester and, as usual, we asked them had they enjoyed their day, and what had they been doing, the younger of the two, Gianni who is six, said that his teacher had been talking to them about WW2, during our subsequent conversation he mentioned that he had informed his teacher that during the war his grandpa (myself) had collected bombs. These comments have prompted me to send this true story.
What our grandson was refering to was a much earlier conversation that I had with my grandcildren I told them that when I was seven years old (1941) my late school friend and I were crossing the Primary School field (we were not chaperoned in those days) on the 8th APRIL 1941 on route to our Infants school, when we discovered a hole in the ground, which had not previously been there. Our main interest at the time was to extract some of the clay that had been exposed, then hide it in the hedge in order that when we arrived home later that day we could produce 'clay allies' which we would bake, under the supervision of our parents and use them as a substitute for 'glass allies' which were, during the war, very difficult to obtain.
As a result of this 'delay' we arrived, much to the annoyance of our teacher, several minutes late. We were then asked by our teacher why we were late,I responded by telling her that we were frightened to cross the school field because we had seen a hole in the ground that had been made by a bomb, a complete story on my behalf, after a good telling off we were orderd to our class room.
Some time later that morning, the whistle blew earlier than normal, we then heard a second whistle, which in those days normally meant that we had to proceed out of the class room and make our way to the air raid shelter situated in the school grounds. On this particular day however, when we had left the confines of the classroom, we were met by very concerned parents, who were under instruction to move us to a designated area well away from school, when I asked my mother what was going on, she told me that they had found an unexploded bomb on the school field and as I later found out was the very hole my freind and I had removed the clay.
The story does not end there. Four or five years ago we were invited to attend the 70th anniversary of the opening of the Primary School.During the evening I asked the Headmaster if there were any records or diaries that covered the 1930 -1940s, he produced several, but in particular one from 1941, in that diary I found the following entry,
April 8th: When the school assembled today, a little boy, who had crossed the Playing field diagonally, from his home, reported that he had seen a hole in the field. It was known that there was an unexploded bomb in the district but its exact location was unknown. The headmaster accompanied by Air Raid Warden ( Mr R Jones ) went along to investigate and both came to the conclusion that it was either a defective bomb or a delayed action bomb of heavy caliper. The ARP Report Centre and the Education Office were notified by telephone and the Headmaster was ordered to evacuate the school immediately. A bomb disposal squad which commenced operations on Good Friday finally removed the bomb on Easter Sunday April 13th. The bomb was dropped by enemy aircraft at 12-48am on Friday April 8th in the school Playing field at a distance of 120 yds from the school.

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