大象传媒

I was a Beverley Town Army cadet during the war. We marched to church every Sunday, and helped with Buy a Spitfire and Salute the Soldier fund raising. There was not much to eat. I particularly remember having chickens in our back garden, fed on scraps, growing our own vegetables, potatoes, cabbages and so on. I also remember, once, carrier bags of fig roll biscuits from Canada being handed out from the CLB HQ in Trinity Lane.
Once there was a day time air raid, followed by the all clear. Later a German bomber came over from Leconfield. I watched the bombs leave the plane and head for Hodgsons. One landed around the stables and I heard that a horse got killed.

One night a bomb landed in the gardens behind Greenwood Avenue, Riding Fields, Thomson Avenue and Cherry Tree Lane. I lived in Greenwood Avenue. We had a steel shelter in our kitchen and there were two other shelters on Riding Fields Square. The bomb did relatively little damage. It could have been a lot worse.

After raids we picked up shrapnel and sometimes the timing nose cones off ack-ack shells. My Dad was in the home guard. He was stationed on the playing fields behind Fenners in Marfleet, in Hull. He was on an ack-ack battery that fired rockets. I also remember that there was a big 4 1鈦�2 inch ack-ack gun mounted on a railway flat bed which travelled between Hull and Beverley.

I watched Wellingtons leaving Leconfield on bombing missions. Two crashed in fog near Hull Bridge whilst returning. Once, a Polish Spitfire pilot forgot to fire his recognition flares, and I saw him shot down. He landed in a field between Beverley and Woodmansey near what is now Lakeminster Park. I also, while watching football at Black Mill, saw Spitfires practising dogfights. One dived straight into the ground and crashed near Broadgates, he did not pull out of his dive.

On VE Day there was a big do and street party in Greenwood Avenue.

Our 1945 Army Cadet camp was in August at Ganton, near Scarborough. The Beverley, Cottingham and Hessle cadets went together for a week. On VJ Day eve we were in Scarborough and swam in Peaseholme Park. The paper men declared, at around 5.00pm, that VJ would be signed at midnight that night. We missed the last bus back to camp and had to walk. At Seamer we got picked up and taken to near the Filey turn off by an ATS truck. We had to walk the rest of the way back to Ganton.
Bill Guest

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