大象传媒

Myself and a mate put in an application to go to London for V.E day, it was turned down, in spite of the fact that we had no duty to perform on the 8th of may, we sat in the billet alone on the morning of the 8th and decided that as most of the men had gone on day leave what few N.C.O 鈥檚 where left in camp at lingfield were getting into a festive mood, we reckoned that we wouldn鈥檛 be missed if we went A.W.O.L, so we put on our best battle dress and s.d caps and went over to the fence onto the old lingfield racecourse.
We crossed this and reached the road, walked several miles towards London and we were given a lift by a lorry arriving in London around 11:00 am.

We made our way to Buckingham palace and climbed onto the Victorian monument which was teaming with people, at some time (I can鈥檛 remember when), the royal family came out onto the palace balcony, my goodness!, the cheer that went up was tremendous; I will never forget the atmosphere of being in those crowds.

Later in the morning the crowds grew to huge numbers and we were carried along by the sheer weight of people, lot鈥檚 of people were in trouble, fainting, falling down, dropping items, many shoe鈥檚 where on the ground and the owners were unable to bend down to retrieve them, at some time we found our selves pressed up against two young lady鈥檚 who were very upset and distraught with the frightening situation, so we took charge of them in a true guardsman fashion and worked our way out of the worst of the crowds, and on to Hyde park where we stayed together all day and evening until they had to catch the last train home to Essex.

I took the address of the girl I had been with on that wonderful day, after the train pulled out at about 11:00pm we then thought we had better be getting back to lingfield, we got a lift on an army truck most of the way, it was a pitch black night and we eventually came to the racecourse, we crossed at what we thought was the correct place and as I say, it was pitch black, we passed through a row of cows, fell over some, and they jumped up making the most horrendous noise.

We found a hole in the fence and went through, and discovered we where in the A.T.S camp which was further along the fence from our camp, so we made a hurried exit back onto the racecourse, we now knew which way to go and founds the place we had came out.

After what seemed like a lifetime we where know back in barracks, and panic set in as it struck home to us what we had done going A.W.O.L from a the Irish guards regiment.

I kept in touch with that lady and we married in April 1946.

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