大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from Lincoln CSV Action Desk on behalf of Mr Cyril Wakefield and has been added with his permission. Mr Wakefield fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

I was born blind and had both eyes removed at the age of two. The beginning of the second world war found me as a student at the King's Manor School for the Blind in York. I left school in December 1941. In January 1942 I went to the Royal Midlands Institute for the Blind in Nottingham. I went there to do a 4 year apprenticeship to become qualified as a progessional basket maker with willows. Whilst serving as an apprentice I had a lot of interesting work with willows. We did work for the Air Minstery making pigeon baskets. These were made to hold one bird to each basket. The pigeons were taken in the bombers on raids over Germany, etc. When/if a plane became damaged or was shot down the bird was released to fly home, with a tag on its leg explaining the circumstances of the incident. We also did work for the Nazy, enclosing rum casks with basket work to protect them. The other work we did was make parachute baskets. These were 30" x 20" x 20" and made in pairs. They had to be made to very precise measurements since 1 bsaket fitted inside another. They were filled with provision and roped together and then dropped by parachute to various organisations behind enemy lines. I made a lot of these. We also made a lot of clothes baskets with a handle at each end. However, these were sent to ammunition factories and loaded with ammunition and then used for transporting it to wherever it was needed.

King's Manor School was attacked by land mines in 1942, just after I left, but fortunately there were no casualties despite there being a lot of damage.

My parents lived in Boston and whilst i was in Nottingham I used to travel home there whenever I could. I remember one particular journey which was a nightmare. I left Nottingham Midlands Station at 6pm. I went to Lincoln where I was to change to go to Boston. However, I missed the last train so was advised to catch the bus to Grantham where I would be able to catch the train to Boston. Once again, the last train had gone by the time I got there so I had to proceed to Peterborough. When I got to Peterborough there were air raids going on and I was told that there was a 3 hour wait but this turned out to be 6 hours. When the train did come it was packed full with servicemen. When I finally reached Boston it was 9am the following morning.

Everyone was very good natured during the war. We all lived for today since we never knew what tomorrow would bring and were hapy to help each other out. The AMricans were very frieindly and helpful, I found, even though they were resented by some people but everyone concentrated on trying to get life back to some sort of normal civilisation.

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