大象传媒

"This story was submitted to the site by the 大象传媒's Peoples War Team in the East Midlands with Ron Birch's permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions."

My mother was a German Jew and so too was my Grandad. When the war started we had two soldiers billeted with us. They stayed with us right through the war. I thought it was great but they may have been keeping an eye on us. As German Jews we had a number, mine was JGOK15959, we all had numbers as Jewish people living in Britain.

My Grandma used to talk to a well spoken gentleman who she used to play wist with. She used to do it one evening a week. We found out later that he was a German spy. We used to see this light next to the castle in Scarborough flashing at night out to sea. We didn鈥檛 realise that it was connected, we mentioned it one day that we used to watch this flashing light at night time. When the man was arrested my gran exclaimed 鈥淢y God I used to play wist with him.

My Dad went to work with munitions in Coventry. I don鈥檛 understand why they sent him if they thought we might be dodgy. We were allowed to go and stay with him once a fortnight and while we were there, there was the big blitz that bombed the Cathedral. We stayed on Lilac avenue in shelters. We had been roller skating just down from the street and that had been flattened.

In Scarborough there was a hotel called the Lysander, named after a plane called the Western Lysander. The pilots who flew it were flying over the houses waving to one of their wives when they hit the chimney pot with the planes wheels. The pilot tried to get back up again, high into the sky, but he couldn鈥檛 so they both bailed out at 100ft. The plane crashed down and they were killed.

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