大象传媒

1) 1939 as a young boy I liked to walk from our house with the postman up Clopton Road to as far as the gates of Lady Beacham's house, I left the postman there and walked back on my own, but on this occasion we had got as far as Kitty Holtom's shop when the first time I heard the airaid Siren, I got a bit frightened, and the postman told me to run back home only to find out it was a false alarm.

2) The second occasion was later on in the war, I was at school at Warwick it was 7o'clock at night and it was bath time, this time the airaid siren went it was on the top of Warwick Castle, I jumped out of the bath got dressed in double quick time and ran down to the basement, this time

3) The bombs came crashing down and anti Aircraft guns made one hell of a noise I was very frightened and lay with my pillow over my head until about 6 the next morning.
Latter that morning we learned that Coventry had been flattened, and the Cathedral was a ruin. There was a rather amusing incident that followed it was that I suffered from warts on my knee, which I had a lot of trouble trying to get rid of them, but after the raid the warts had completely gone.

4) The next occasion was leading up to D Day, I had been transferred to a school near Lyme Regis called Allhallows, it was situated on top of the cliffs overlooking Lyme bay, our dormitory window overlooked Lyme Bay and you could see as far as Portland Bill, so we knew that something was about to happen, a week or so earlier the police had come to the school and confiscated all Binoculars and cameras so this act told us that something was up, in fact we even had a lottery as to when it would happen. What the police had forgotten was most boys had very good eyesight.

5) My final experience was on VJ day in Stratford-on-Avon the White Swan Hotel had been taken over by the U.S. Military as a recuperation place for members of their military personnel who had been injured to recuperate. On V. J. night the Americans set up a stage outside the Hotel and a U.S. Marine Band played and the yanks painted the town red, in fact some idiot threw a thunderflash under the stage

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