大象传媒

In 1944, I was about 17 and working for British Petroleum. I was a telephone operator and my friend worked on the Teleprint machine. As general staff we knew there was a special telephone line to Portsmouth dockyard, where tere was lots of military action, but the manager had a scrambler on his phone because a lot of things were secret. Being in this situation meant we had a sense that something was going to happen, but we were all sworn to secrecy to not even mention these suspicions. At the beginning of summer in 1944, there was so much activity on the teleprinter and phone calls to management. Oil tankers were coming in to fill up and
there were soldiers on guard at the installation, we also had a special pass to get into work - we knew that tensions were rising.
We were on shift work and during nightshifts it often fell to me to help plot where the German aircraft were, as the oil installation was a major target. As soon as the aircraft would reach the Isle of White, I had to raise the alarm so the men working in the area took cover in the air raid shelters. It was terrifying.
You had to run like mad because you only had minutes - but thinking about all that oil going up certainly meant you got in there quick enough.
One time, the closest we came to being hit, was when a seamine had come off course and floated on its parachute, made to control its entry into the water, over the installation. Unbelievably, the material on the parachute stuck between massive oil tanks and hung the mine only meters from the ground. If it had touched down, I wouldn't be telling this story now.

One the night before the D-Day landing, my mother awoke me, saying the German's had landed, they were asleep on the front lawn and that lorries and tanks were parked outside. At the time, my father had been taken into hospital, so my mother and I were alone in the house. Scared and apprehensive we peeked out of the bedroom window and saw all up the road, those who had lawns there were hundreds of soldiers rtying to sleep - some of them were even trying to shave as best they could. My mum was more frightened than me - sure that they were Germans. That is until to our relief, we heard one of them talking in an American accent!!
In the morning they were gone to the shores of France to sacrifice their lives.

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