大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War website by Steven Turner, a Peoples War Story gatherer with the 大象传媒 Radio Cambridgeshire Action Desk. It was submitted at Duxford Museum during their VE celebrations, on behalf of Mr Geoffery Diaper and has been added to the site with his permission.

"I joined up in 1940 as an airman and trained at technical college in Wolverhampton. I finished the war with 35 Squadron at Gravely, Cambridgeshire. At the end of the war I flew as Signals NCO on a tour of the United States. We did lots of air displays in our Lancasters, across different towns & cities as guests of the United States Air Force. There were twelve aircraft in the flight. The Americans treated us very well. While we were out there one of the lads married a local girl, for which he was reprimanded!

I remember a couple of incidents during my service. I was posted to a Turbinlite Havoc Squadron at Hunsdon, Hertfordshire. One day I was in the radio caravan and I heard a British Pilot over France saying he鈥檇 been hit; 鈥淗e鈥檚 got me, He鈥檚 got me, I鈥檓 bailing out鈥�, he said. The next minute another pilot came over on the radio and said that he was covering him.

There was another time when we were at Castle Bromwich, we went to a cinema at Aston Cross, opposite the HP Sauce factory. The Film was Arthur Lucan and Kitty McShane (鈥淥ld Mother Riley鈥�?). We met two girls and arranged a date for another night. My fellow airman said he couldn鈥檛 make it and I said I wasn鈥檛 going on my own so we didn鈥檛 keep the date. On the Sunday we went to the Bull Ring to see an aeroplane that was on display. We met the same two girls again. They said they had waited but the sirens had gone so they went home. The Cinema got a direct hit from a bomb.

My wife Beryl had a lucky escape of her own, she was playing outside her house in Lavenham, Suffolk, near to the American airfield. A bomb fell from an American aircraft as it flew over, it went past the playing children and buried itself 15 feet away without exploding!"

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