大象传媒

In 1938 I joined the army with a friend of mine, we had talked it over and realised that there was a good chance we would get conscripted so we figured if we joined early then we would have the pick or our regiment. I went for the armoured cavarlry and got into the Hussars, at this time it all involved tanks and armoured vehicles and I was trained as a driver and mechanic which was fun. I was orignally part of the British Expeditionary Force and was in France but not at Dunkirk, we were stationed in the south and like a lot of regiments at the time we were badly mauled and had to return back to England to rebuild the regiments. We were stationed in various places as we trained up new troops but by far the worst was an old shoe factory not far from Coventry. At the time the threat of invasion was just beginning to be realised and Coventry was getting hit really bad. One night when we were at this makeshift barracks there was a very bad bombing raid which hit the village near where we were stationed, it was very bad as many people were killed and a lot of the houses were destroyed taking peoples memories and mementoes with them. Even though we did our best and helped to pull as many survivpors as possible out of the buildings there was only so much that we were capable of doing. It was a real shame but it was made all the worse because the next day all of the locals blamed our presence as the reason for the bombers hitting the village, I guess it was plausible but it was really very unlikely as we hadn't been there that long and Coventry was so close that it far was more likely that the bombers had released there payloads early because they didn't know where they were, only that they were on a rough bombing to Coventry.
I didn't remain in the Hussars long after that in 1941 I left the Hussars as I was recruited for special duties. I was assigned to a special unit which became known as "Morris's Mission". This was because it was ran by a Major Morris, at this time the threat of invasion was really worrying many people, espescially the high ranking officials, our mission was to become a special guard for the prtoection of the royal family. We followed them everywhere to Balmoral and Windsor and we were always on the alert in case word of invasion came to us. If Britain had been invaded we were to escort the royal family to the nearest available airfield and get them to Canada as quickly and as safely as possible. It felt really good to be doing such a special mission although it didn't really hit home till the mission ended. We went back to normal duties at the end of 1042 when the threat of invasion was over considered unlikely and we all went out to stand on the grass at Winsor and had the King and Queen come out and thank us for our service to them. It truly was an amazing time.

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