大象传媒

During my seven years service in the army, many strange events happened to me hence the phrase coined by my close friend Roy: It could only happen to an Atkinson!"

Early in the war I was conscripted into the army to train at Fort Albert on the Island of Alderney. Chatting to my three friends Ron, Snappy and Mike, we talked of our home towns. Mike obviously came from Lancashire and when he told me he lived at Nelson I replied that I had often talked to a firm V E Haighton's in Barrowsford, Nelson. Mike laughed: " That was me you talked to, you sold us chemicals"

The war had just ended in Europe and I was enjoying a pleasant lunch at a roadside cafe on the Via Borgasie in Rome. Suddenly I heard a strong voice roar: "Hello Cast" My thought immediately went back to my childhood days when I was nicknamed Cast, short for Cast Iron Bill, a goalkeeper featured in a boys comic magazine named Wizard. I was named this for my play as a goalkeeper in our school team. I looked up and recognised my childhood friend Jack Murray, now a sergeant in a Lancashire Infantry Regiment. He explained he was on his way to join his regiment in Naples where they were to be shipped to the far East. Sadly Jack was killed in Burma.

With the war over I contrived to have a hernia repair operation conducted in a military hospital. Chatting with the corporal in the next bed he informed me that before D Day took place he had swum out from a submarine and had taken samples of the beach sand on Sword B. This was to see if the beach would bear the weight of tanks. he had later been wounded hence his need for an operation. I guessed from his speech that he came from Lancashire. He said " You wont know my village, it is called Delph, and its almost in Yorkshire. I was amused. Before the war, I told him I used to speak to a firm of calico printers at Delph, named Astbury and Pickford Ltd. It was Len's turn to smile. "It would be me you spoke to, I worked there, in the office!"

In May 1946, still in the army, Russia was under the rule of president Meletov, I visited Moscow. My hotel, the Rossia, was situated on the edge of Red Square and from my bedroom windows I could see the red brick building "The Kremlin". Each floor in the hotel was overseen by a floor lady who governed her visitors with a rod of iron. All movements had to be related to her. It was policy to accompany these conversations with a bribe of polo mints or mars bars which commanded a high price on the black market and supported their meagre pay.

I descended on the lift which never stopped at floor twelve which was given over to the dreaded KGB. The lift stopped at floor eleven and a man I took to be a German stepped into the lift. I murmured a polite response "Guten Tag" he looked at me firmly and said "You're not a German, you're English. You used to walk to work with me in Newton Heath". I then remembered he worked for A V Roe, aircraft manufactures, I worked at a chemical works. he told me that during the war he had moved to Toronto, Canada to help to make the Lancaster Bombers. Later he became a newspaper reporter and had been sent to Moscow by his paper the Toronto Herald.

A truly remarkable coincidence.

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