大象传媒

On the evening of 9th August 1939 when living in Wyke Regis, my Dad took Mum and me to the end of Bincleaves Road Weymouth, over looking the Bincleaves arm of the breakwater to see the Royal Fleet Review. The King,George VI had come down to Weymouth to review the reserve fleet.He had left from Bincleaves Pier in the Royal Yacht Victoria & Albert in the morning, lunched on one of the ships and did his passage around the fleet in the afternoon. In total there were 130 ships assembled.(The King had visited the Home Fleet at Weymouth with his brother the Duke of Kent the year before 1938, but we were not living in the area then so didn't know about it!)As the evening drew on so the fleet switched all their fairy lights on, it was a wonderful sight.How could anybody go to war againts a navy so mighty as this!
However come Sunday the 3rd September, a beautiful sunny morning, I was told not to go far away as a pronouncement was the be made at 11.15am. I think every body thought that possibly Hitler or his Luftwaffe were coming over to bomb us all. He didn't, but a few weeks later our milkman, Sandy Cheeseman, said the Army were in one of his fields playing "silly buggers"
so we kids just had to go and see. They were just lying down in the field behind a raised bank with a broken fence on top,some fast asleep other just talking and smoking. "What you doing mister?" "Waiting for Hitler and his gang to come over and play marbles." "Can I have a look at your gun mister?" Lots of laughter and then told it's not a gun but a rifle and I can buy it for half-a-crown but if I just wanted to fire it I could if I ran an errand."Coo yes please." So he gave me a sixpence to get a small packet of Woodbines and a bar of chocalate. I ran all the way to the shop only stopping to tell some other kids I was going to fire an army rifle.On return he took the cigarettes and chocolate but said I could keep the halfpenny change and he was sorry but the sergent had been round and said that nobody was to fire their rifles today. Later I realized that I had been taken in!
Dummy wooden guns were being placed in hastly dug pits along the cliff edges where later land mines were to be laid. But that's another story

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