大象传媒

My other memories are from a cousin, Leslie Rose, who was evacuated from Dunkirk. He recalled that he had "never swum in my life" but did so for the very first time ever in his desperation to get to a boat.

My one time employer was a navigator in the RAF and told me of bombing raids over Germany. Their aircraft was hit and one of the propellers sliced through the fuselage severing the pilot in two. There was no counselling for such horrors.

A more recent neighbour told me of the time he was taken prisoner in Singapore and worked on the Burma Railway. His experiences were not happy but he did say that not all Japanese in charge were brutal. His recollection was that clearing the jungle was a losing battle as it grew again so quickly.

My mother, whose brother and sister-in-law evacuated themselves from Coventry to her house in Leamington, cycled with them as soon as allowed after the Coventry blitz to see if their house in Humber Road was still standing. She recalls seeing a street of demolished houses with a row of fires still burning from coal stored in the cellars.

One of my own childhood memories is walking to Emscote Road in Warwick to collect the mother of the sister-in-law and take her to our home in Milverton so that she wouldn't bealone during the air raids. On one particular night the moonlight was as brilliant as daylight. That was the night of the severe Coventry blitz. We all sat huddles under the staircase but I was too young to experience fear.

My paternal grandparents lost their house in the Birmingham bombings and they were given some of our furniture to furnish their second one. The one thing that survived it all was a plate on which was depicted two raised eggs. I still have it to cherish.

We received some airgraph letters from a neighbour who was in the Army in Egypt - these were written on a single sheet of issued paper and photographed down to a size where they were virtually illagible!. These concerned nothing of note as they were censored; nevertheless to ensure future preservation I sent them to his Warwickshire Regiment Museum on the 50th anniversary of the War's end.

My other memory is of crowded stations and packed trains and sitting on suitcases in the corridors until there was an exodus of service personnel at certain stations. And VJ Day when a neighbour produced an unheard of loudspeaker and Souza marches blared out and everyone danced in the streets and I learned the Palais Glide!!

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