大象传媒

This is an extract of an interview taken by the Pupils of the Da Vinci School.

"This story was submitted to the site by the 大象传媒's Peoples War Team, in partnership with Derwent Community Team and The Da Vinci School in the East Midlands with the permission of Mr Williamson. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions."

I can remember the war breaking out on September 3rd, on Sunday morning. It was my birthday the next day, I was to be 16 years old. The food wasn鈥檛 too bad to start off with, but after two years I joined the army. The food wasn鈥檛 too bad in the army. It was eatable, but the American food was better. I had a little bit of that sometimes. Before I went into the army, I decided to go on a hike with someone and we missed the last bus back to Derby. Were stopped by a police man on the way home, because we were walking in the dark. He though that maybe we were German parachutists.

The next experience that I had was that my younger brothers was sent out to Belper to live, they were evacuated and sent there. One Sunday afternoon they turned up at our door. They had walked from Belper to our home!

I went down to Salisbury Plain where I had to join up for the Army, and I wasn鈥檛 there for too many weeks before I had to go back up north because the Americans had stated to come over

After my training I went out to Italy, to get ready for the invasion of France. Sometimes you felt scared. One of the outstanding moments that I can think about was when we were to cross the Rhine.

Seniors officers took me out of my tank, and I was waiting to come home on leave. When they were crossing the Rhine, I was spare, waiting to come home. I was given the job of going to a lorry full of ammunition, and told to wash it. The Germans came over and started dropping anti personnel bombs. They burst on top of the ground a sent a blast out. I went into the army in 1942 and came out 1946.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.