大象传媒

I was born in June 1937 near Bickenhill, Birmingham a area vastly changed beyond all recognition with . the N.E.C. and the M42 now dominating the area. Possibly my fIrst recollections of probably life itself was the night of the 14th of November 1940, this was the night the Luftwaffe blitzed Coventry. Airraid warning sirens had chased me and my mother and father into a communal air raid shelter. Although I can vaguely remember hearing explosions and the vibrations they caused, I suppose at the age of 3 Y2 it did not mean much to me then. Much later on the all clear was sounded, and people began to leave the air raid shelter, my father lifted me up through a small hatch at the other end of the shelter, all I could see in front of me was a vast glow of red sky with odd bursts of white, yellow and orange interspersed with ominous billowing clouds of black and grey smoke. This was Coventry ablaze. My father and mother followed me out of this hatchway. A few moments later my mother began to weep, shortly followed by my father. They were totally dumbstruck my the sheer enormity of what must have happened to the people of Coventry that night.

My father was in the Birmingham police force, and a air raid warden at night. He saw no point in my mother and me remaining in Birmingham with all the horrors that were to follow so we were evacuated out to relatives in a small town called Stone near Stafford. It must have been about early 1942 that my aunt shouted from outside, come and look! Dashing outside I was stunned to see hundreds of American flying fortresses heading east at (I'm guessing) about 1000 feet or less, the very ground shook under us
as they thundered over. The sky seemed black with then and they seemed to be passing over for about 10 minutes or more. 15 minutes later a cry went up, there's more! This time it was SpitfIres and Hurricanes, They were a bit further north, so it was difficult to judge how many, but it seemed a lot to me. I now know of course that these were the American daylight bombing raids on Germany, with a British fIghter escort.

It must have been late 1943 to 44 that my father was invalided out of the police force having been hit in the face with a rifle butt, attempting to break up a fIght outside a pub one night. After a period of convalescence, he went back to his old profession as a draughtsman, and got a job working for the Admiralty on some top secret project called Radar. This was at Hazelmere, Surrey. One summers evening we had visited the local Social club where I had been entered in a fancy dress competition, (didn't get anywhere), we were walking back home, when the air raid siren sounded it's spine chilling wail. Aircraft could be heard not far away. It had just got dark and we were walking across some parkland with a tall hedge on one side, when there was a roaring noise right by us whoosh, whoosh, whoosh ! continuously for about half a minute, after picking ourselves up of the grass, my father deduced that this was a anti-aircraft rocket battery. That must have been when my hair first started to go grey. A few nights later the air raid siren went again, with all ofus out of bed, we watched from the bedroom window as a solitary aircraft passed over with what appeared to be it's engine on fIre. The engine stopped and the flames went out,
. fully five seconds elapsed my father shouted #*A!* it's a //=""+#*= Doodlebug! He almost threw me and my mother under the bed, then followed us. That Doodlebug fell on the outskirts of Hazelmere and did no damage.

The precise dates and times may be somewhat hazy, but the memory of these events will live on for evermore with me, never to be forgotten.

Roger Dalkins.

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