大象传媒

From Coventry to Butlins
By Charles Cook and told to The Earl Shilton Senior Citizens Centre
People in story: Charles Cook
Location of story: Coventry Earl Shilton Hinckley Skegness
This is Charles Cooks story: it has been added by Jim Lord with permission from the author who understands the terms and conditions of adding his story to the website.

By no stretch of the imagination can I be called a war veteran but I can claim some experience with the horrors of World War II. It began in November of 1940 when German bombers plastered Coventry for twelve hours by the light of what was called a Harvesters Moon. Anti-aircraft guns had little effect and the Spitfires failed to dent the hundreds of Dornier bombers that dropped their deadly loads with impunity. My house and school were bombed as was Coventry Cathedral where my father and I were to be confirmed into the Anglican Church. At the age of thirteen I was evacuated with my whole school to Lincoln.
The following year my family moved to Earl Shilton in Leicestershire and the closest I came to being bombed again was when a damaged German Dornier in panic dropped a 2,000 pounder in a field nearby. Apart from killing a pig, it did no other damage but my brother and I, cocky little city types in school caps, stood on the edge of the crater for the photographer.

At the age of sixteen I was ready for service in the Royal Navy and on August 23rd.1944, when I was 17录 years old I signed for an engagement "Until the end of the present emergency" and I was found to be "of perfectly sound and healthy constitution, free from all physical malformation, active and intelligent and fit in all respects for His Majesty's Service". I drank to that. On that date I was assigned to HMS Royal Arthur as an Ordinary Seaman, under the Y Scheme but did not go there until reaching the age of 17陆 in November.

To qualify for the Y Scheme I joined the Hinckley Grammar School Air Cadet Corps. While learning how to identify the silhouettes of German Stukas and Heinkels and the Dorniers that had bombed Coventry, I took several flights in Lancaster and Wellington bombers much to my father's distress while he reluctantly signed my permission form. The RAF parachute packer's comment, "Bring it back if it doesn't work." made me think he may have been right when I put my foot though the aircraft's canvas skin

On November 13th 1944 the train pulled out of Leicester station and I waved to my parents as they disappeared into the steam and with the typical self-centredness of a seventeen year old called out, "You don't know what this means to me". The war was still on and with sons of my own I now know what it meant to them.
In peacetime, HMS Royal Arthur in Skegness, Lincolnshire was a Butlin's Holiday Camp and later to be converted into a "concrete dreadnought".

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