大象传媒

During the war I lived close to the Thurleigh Airfield. I remember the Americans the B-17s returning from the daylight missions. They came over our house very low. I saw the damage caused by the enemy fire. Big holes in the fuselage, propellers note turning.....
When the crews completed a certain number of flights over enemy territory they celebrated in The Fox public house at Keysoe. Occasionaly the men drank so much they had to pushed back to base in my brother's pram. The next morning before I went to school I had to fetch the pram back form the MP Post so that my brother had somewhere to sit during the day.
When the Germans bombed the Airfield I slept under the dining room table for safety. The Air Raid Warden rebuked me once for opening the blackout curtains and showing a light. My father was in the Home Guard . We stayed up all one night when a Prisoner of War escaped after killing a guard a stealing a gun. We later found out that he had been killed in a shoot out with a farmer and his son at Pertenhall Village, the next village to us.
When the war was over we decorated our house with the stars and stripes next to the Union flag. For many years after the war my father and mother recieved visits and Christmas cards from the Americans they had befriended.
In 1992 one of the Americans who was at Thurleigh to celbrate the 50th anniversary of their arrival at Thurleigh Base called to see my mother and took her out for a social evening. Sadly both my parents have passed away and now contact with those brave young men has been lost.

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