- Contributed by听
- katrinadlee
- People in story:听
- Katrina Lee Rose Hallam
- Location of story:听
- East Anglia
- Article ID:听
- A4046735
- Contributed on:听
- 10 May 2005
Last summer I took my Grand mother on a shopping trip to Bury St Edmunds and as it was a lovely sunny day we sat for a while in the Abbey Gardens. It was a very poignant moment as she suddenly realised where she was and the following memories flooded back to her:
I left Nottingham in quite a hurry just two days before D day following a telephone call to my mother from my husband Harry who was stationed just outside Bury St Edmunds.
He was a wireless operator in the 43rd Wessex division of the Reconnaissance corps attatched to the Royal Armoured corps.He had managed to secure me digs at a house in Bury town centre but the journey there was anything but hurried with at least three changes and standing room only on trains packed with soldiers in excited anticipation of reporting to their own barracks,all unaware of what was about to happen.
I met Harry on Angel Hill, we walked around the town for a while absorbing the excited atmostphere with Harry returning to barracks that night and me to digs.
The next day we sat in the Abbey Gardens watching all the planes leave. The noise was deafening and the sight terrifying - (enough to recall so clearly sixty years later.)
The following day my heart sank as Harry approached with all his badges and insignia stripped from his uniform - this was to be our last meeting before he left for Holland,although it was a very anxious month before I recieved any letters.
Harry was not finally discharged till March
1946 after being badly wounded in the arm in a booby trap after crossing the Nijmegen bridge from Arnhem in Germany.
Rose and Harry had many more very happy years together which produced a daughter and six grandchildren.Rose moved to Thetford to be closer to her daughter and grand-daughter little knowing all those years ago how events would come full circle.
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