大象传媒

In June/July 1943 I was in my last term at Skellingthorpe Road Junior School, Lincoln. One day for the last two periods we were taken to the Boultham Baths for a swimming lesson. There would be about seventy or eighty children from these two classes in the charge of two teachers, (remember this was in the Second World War and we were short of teachers).

About four or five of us pupils who could swim were allowed to go to the deep end of the baths (unsupervised). At the north side of the baths there was an area of grass that stretched from the 10-foot end down to the 5'6" part. There were a group of airmen (with their ladies) sunbathing on the grass, which had a wooden fence at the back upon which the airmen had hung their uniform jackets. They had brought with them a large round yellow rubber dinghy, which was in the swimming pool at the 5'6" part.

Of course us child swimmers took advantage of this and were really enjoying ourselves. One of the pupils (Cyril Bentley, who lived in Swanpool) said to me "I wish I had brought my autograph book with me, that is Guy Gibson there". I had a paper bag that had contained two ounces of sweets. These bags were shaped to form a triangular top to bend over to cover the sweets. I torn the top off my sweet bag and went up to this airman and asked him for his autograph. All the airmen and their ladies laughed but Guy Gibson found a pen from somewhere and wrote his name on this scrap of paper. I gave the scrap of paper to Cyril Bentley and said "Can't you stick this in your book?"

The last I heard of Cyril Bentley was that he had trained and had become a Manager for Woolworth's.
Years later I worked in the Laboratory at B. Cannon & Co. Ltd. Gelatine Manufacturers in Lincoln. When I heard that Gibson's batman had come to work there. His name was Crosby so everyone called him "Bing". He struck me as being tall but had a bent shoulder so his face seemed to point to the ground. He would not talk much about his job during the war but once he did tell me that Gibson's dog (Nigger) was not where every one thinks it is buried.

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