大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by the Dunstable At War Team on behalf of the author and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was born in Dunstable in 1936. I remember going to school in Chiltern Road with my gas mask, which we used to hang on a designated peg in the cloakroom. We wore short trousers with long grey socks, grey shirt and a school cap. Bennett's Brewery was also situated in Chiltern Road. It was always guarded by a soldier with a rifle and was used as some sort of military headquarters. I think they may have been French or Czech as they wore these strange hats. My father was annoyed because in order to keep in touch with their counterparts in Europe, they stuck a huge great telegraph pole in the middle of our lawn! My mother said she knew when D-day day was about to take place, because a few days beforehand the whole place became a beehive of activity.

My father was a butcher and had a shop at the top of George Street in Dunstable. We lived above the shop and watched endless convoys of tanks and lorries winding their way along the High Street. After school I used to listen to these weird messages that were broadcast over the wireless such as, 鈥淢y mother鈥檚 aunt has dropped her cup,鈥� or something similar, which of course was a coded message for someone in Europe!

We had an Anderson shelter in our garden that we seldom used. My mother had a large oak table and if there was an air-raid siren we鈥檇 hide underneath it! My mother took in evacuees, most of whom came from the Ackland School in London. At one time we had six evacuees and a lodger because we had about five bedrooms. Our lodger worked for a plastics company in Dunstable, which made canopies for Spitfires and Hurricanes.

My father was an auxiliary fireman in the AFS (Auxiliary Fire Service). He carried out fire watching and as we had a large cellar, stored all the stirrup pumps for the service. One night he was called out to attend fires in London. During the course of this particular raid, a plate glass window exploded close to him and he ended up with several pieces of glass embedded into his skin. Years afterwards, little blisters would appear and he would get hold of a pin and dig out a tiny piece of glass!

Most of my toys were wooden (tanks, guns and ships mostly), made by my grandfather who was an ironmonger by trade. He was a foreman at the foundry at Harris and Carters. He retired in 1938 but returned to work throughout the war years after many skilled men were called up. Part of the foundry was closed and was used by the war department (WD) for storage. The remaining part was used exclusively to produce castings for the admiralty.

On VE night I sat on the entrance to the public air-raid shelter near the town hall and watched people dancing in the street. Someone found an enormous Catherine wheel. It was wonderful. The first firework I鈥檇 ever seen!

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