大象传媒

The war brought me to derby when my unit was posted here prior to service in Holland. Whilst here, I met and fell in love with a Derby girl so after the war I settled there.

Early in the last war, as a young man I lived with my family in a surban street in London. Working for Ilford Ltd, a well known film manufacturers. There I was able from my wages, to buy a brand new Raleigh bicycle, and with the bike, I spent many happy hours exploring the adjacent Essex countryside. One fine, sunny day, I rode out on my bike into the leafly lanes of that county around loughton and through the Epping Forest to emerge on high land overlooking London. In the distance the Thames could be seen snaking silvery towards the English channel. As I got off my bicycle to admire this view, sirens wailed their air raid warning, and in the skies shortly I could spot the formations of German Bombers heading up the river, their evident target, the London Docks. Even as I watched, our fighter planes engaged the bombers and their fighter escourts. The sky above them was criss crossed with the patterns of their aerobics. Suddenly with a roar of engines, a squadron of Hurricane fighter planes roared over my head, making towards the battle happenning over London, a stirring sight indeed, but such events of course, must have had their casualties. one was a hurricane that spun over me with smoke pouring from its engine. As I watched, it spun over in the air and a dot fell from it which promptly streamed into a parachute. drama indeed. I later read in the local paper that the pilot, a Polish man who could not speak much English, was caught by a detachment of Home Guard who mistook him for a Luftewaffe Airman and were in no mood to treat him with kid gloves, when fortunaely the RAF turned up in a lorry t take him back to his base. The alertness of our fighters was so costly to the germans that daylight raids on London were stopped in favour of night raids of which you can read an account of in my books.

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