大象传媒

The accounts that follow may not appear to be in chronological order to a reader but they are some of my strongest recollections like flash photos in a forgotten visual narative. The first occurance must have followed an air raid warning with being woken, wrapped in a blanket and with the rest of my family gathered in the kitchen. We waited there till all were ready to go to the air raid shelter at the bottom of our back garden. While waiting in the blackout dark kitchen the only light came from inside the gas oven where there was a row of brilliant blue flames, not for their heat but for the little light they gave. Next we plunged into the dark night to be greeted with the sound of aero engines, waving beams of searchlights and stars like you don't see today. My next sharpest memory happened around the days/weeks after DDay. It was late morning, sunny with some cotton wool clouds and I wa playing alone close to the house in the back garden. I heard the sound of an approaching aircraft engine very familiar to me even then. The sound was coming from the direction of HMS St Vincent and looking up against the glare of the sun came into view a very low flying Spitfire executing a slow victory roll. But most memorable was that it passed right overhead upside down and I could see the pilot looking down right at me and in the blink of an eye it was gone its sound dying away as it flew on to HMS Deadalus a naval aerodrome at Lee-on-the-Solent. Now I can only wonder, who was he, what happened to him ?

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