大象传媒

I learned about the water bottle radio about 1947 when I first heard the story from the man who made
the water bottle radio,I was 13 years old at the time and was skeptical about the story because it seemed too far fetched for even a 13 year old to believe.
The story started for me when I and a couple of friends were kicking a football about on a grass area
between newly erected prefabs close to my home. One of my friends was called John Willbourne who had newly arrived with his family having moved into a prefab.
We played football on that early summer evening and it began to rain and John Willbourne suggested we should go to his nearby prefab for shelter,which we did and we met John's father the only person at home at the time, after we settled and had a cup of tea John's father told us he had been a POW in Poland in ww2 at the time of capture he was a private in the British army at Dunkirk. He said his father had been a POW in ww1 and had told him
when he went off to war that if he should be captured he should think of telling his capters of a job he could do that would keep him away from the back breaking work of using a pick and shovel.
John's father[private Willbourne]told us that the thousands captured by the germans with him
at Dunkirk were herded into a field and it was then he remembered his father's words about avoiding the pick and shovel, so he went to the far side of the field to sit quietly and think of what he could tell
when asked by his capters of his prewar occupation.
After some thought he decided that he would say he had been a cobbler prewar because he had always repaired his families shoes having taught himself
how to do it. The German capters accepted that he was a cobbler when he was later asked.
When he arrived at the POW Camp in Poland he was given a workroom to enable him to repair the footwear of all the prisoners, only he used the room
and after a month or so all the POWs became depressed by the fact that they had no news of how the war was going so he thought back to his school days and remembered that he had built successfully a crystal radio set while at school.
He then thought about repeating the same project again but this time he would have to make the component parts himself.this he did using old razor blades etc.,and he managed to get a crystal from a Polish lady who worked in the camp kitchen. the radio was a success and soon the POWs were up to date with the 大象传媒 NEWS each day and the camp took on a new atmosphere,the germans noticed the change and realised there was a radio hidden some where and had many searches in their attempts to find it
but never were successful as private Willbourne had hidden the radio in the bottom half of his water bottle which hung on the peg on the back of his workroom door, in their searches the German guards
would take the water bottle and tip it to see it contained water which it always did only in the top half as Private Willbourne had soldered a plate through the middle of the water bottle allowing the space for the crystal set in the water tight bottom half of the water bottle
Years passed and about 1986 my wife and I were on our way home from visiting our daughter in Manchester, I switched the car radio on and we listened to a 大象传媒 program called 'Down your way'
this was a Sunday afternoon, the program was compered by Brian Johnston and he would chat with
individuals about the area they lived in and then play a piece of music of their choice and at the moment he was chatting to the curator of a British Army museum in Winchester and the curator then said they had a radio made by a private Willbourne whilst he was a POW which he then showed to Brian Johnston.As soon as I heard this I remembered the story I was told in the prefab in 1947.
I wrote to the local newspaper about Private Willbourne's radio and they did a full page story about it and they were so fortunate to get the
story as when they checked with the family they were told that Private Willbourne was in hospital and not expected to live for more than a day or two
The reported wrote to me and told his readers that he had gonr on 3 consecutive evenings to Private
Willbourne's bedside and he was in a coma or similar
on the first two evenings but on the the third
evening Private Willbourne was fully awake and aware
and he told the reporter the whole story and private Willbourne died the next day

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