大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Geoff Knight of Age Concern Suffolk on behalf of Ken Chalk (the author) and has been added to the site with his permission.The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

In 1944 I was in the Royal Navy, Fleet Air Arm branch, being trained by the RAF.
It was approaching D Day, but of course we didn鈥檛 know this - we could only guess.
A lot of heavy stuff was moving past our camp at RAF Henlow. There was a 5 mile
restriction in force which meant we could not go any further than this from our camp.
A colleague named Easter from Tooting and myself from Acton decided we were
going to go home for a week-end to London. We both started early morning, walking
away from the camp in Bedfordshire,and waited on a country road, hoping to catch a
lorry that would take us past the camp on the way to London.
We waited some time and then an Army man on a motor bike came along, slowed
down and asked us if we wanted a lift. He said they would be along soon.
We waited and heard them a mile away and then round the bend trundled the
tanks.We held our thumbs out.They said they couldn鈥檛 stop but they鈥檇 help us get on,
which of course we did.
Perched on top of the tanks, with all the sailors on their way back to billet, we passed
by the camp. They all cheered and Easter and I returned their waves. We thought we
had been recognised by now and would be on a charge when we got back. But no - we
both got home after a great week-end and nobody let on when we got back.

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