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WARTIME MEMORIES By IAN HAWKER

I was born in Weymouth in 1937 in Brownlow Street near the railway station. My earliest wartime memories are of the bombing. Although there was a public air raid shelter in the street outside our house, we always sheltered under the stairs. My father worked at Bincleave torpedo depot and was therefore in a reserved job, working mostly at night, so my mother, sister and I used to cram into the cupboard under the stairs, feeling the vibrations as the bombs dropped. One night the nearby railway signal box received a direct hit and one man was killed. Another bomb hit the locomotive sheds causing several locomotive to be blown off the track. My father had an allotment garden nearby and as a small boy I can remember seeing the American locomotives with their deep toned hooters, and 'USA' on their tenders before being sent to France after the Normandy invasion of 1944.

When the bus garage in Commercial Road was bombed; my mother, sister and I were walking along Queen Street, and my mother pushed us into a garage for protection when we heard the bomb go off.

My mother's sister, Auntie Lil, lived in llchester Road, Westham: with her husband, Uncle Fred who worked for the Weymouth Electric Light Co and was also an auxiliary fireman. They were bombed out, and a picture of their home with its windows missing is in the 'Weymouth at War Exhibition' at the Nothe Fort. They went to live with Uncle Fred's relations in Rodwell, and were bombed out there. Nobody wanted to live next door to them after that! Uncle Fred had an allotment off Rodwell Avenue, which received a stick of three bombs on it. I was taken to see the craters, about thirty feet in diameter and remember Uncle Fred saying 'I shan't have to dig the xxxxxx this year' .

My most memorable recollections however are of the build up to D-Day with continuous convoys of US Army trucks, tanks, guns and engineering vehicles arriving in Weymouth. Columns of troops were marching along the Esplanade. I experienced the delights of chewing gum, ice cream, doughnuts and 'candy' which I had never tasted before. I saw the transport aircraft returning in the early hours of D-Day with their lights on. I even was taken, shortly after D-Day, to see the landing craft being loaded on the hard at Castletown.

One thing that does stick in my mind - even at the height of the bombing, I never felt fear, because none of those around me ever seemed to show fear. I wonder how people would behave today under the same conditions.

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