大象传媒

One thing I rememebr, a little ditty, sung to the tune of one of a song from 'Annie Get Your Gun'. It was about the Doodlebugs, "First you hear their engines. Then you hear it stop. Then you run for Cover, and wait for it to pop."

I lived in Colchester during the war, on Straight Road. My father, B.A.Brown, had been Civil Defence Co-ordinator since 1935. In the war he was a fire-watcher, and often slept in his office at the Town Hall. In 1940 we were evacuated, making private arrangements, and stayed in Oxford for seven weeks. We were driven there but came back by train, through Ipswich - in the middle of an air-raid. How my father managed to sort our luggage out in the darkness when we arrived I don't know.

There was an air-raid shelter in Shrub End, just near-by. A tank trap was hard by as well. There was an AFS station and a static water tank. At home my father acquired a two-tier Morrison shelter in 1942. It was made like steel girders. I slept in it every night. When there was an air-raid the rest of the family came in with mel.

In 1944 an American Mustang's tail came off and landed on an elm tree by my grandpapers' house, near the barracks. It burst into flames, ammunition was flying everywhere and all the windows blew out. Bombs devastated St Botolph's Corner, destorying two clothing factories, shops and houses. My grandfather was an inspector of bomb damaged building for about a year during the war.

The air raids continued. I can remember playing in the garden and seeing doodlebugs come over. Once the blast from a bomb brought down our ceiling. There was plaster all over the floor.

Colchester of course is a garrison town. We were very close to the barracks. There were troops from many different countries, Free Czechs, Australians. One a group of Indian cavalry on their horses gave my sister a piece of chapati to eat. Where the Glass House is there was a POW camp. First it was Italians, in their brown uniforms. I saw them, when I went fishing, cleaning the river bed out. Then a few weeks later there were Germans who made a reservoir. One woman in our area befriended a German POW and kept in touch for years afterwards.

Towards the end of the war the authorities had cleared some of the beaches from mines, and let people go to the seaside for a break. We went to Dovercourt. You couldn't leave your county, so my father had to show his pass. Not long before D-Day in 1944 we had a week's holiday at Walton on the Naze. It was more danagerous than we realised at the time, being at the coast just as the invasion forces were being prepared.

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