大象传媒

At the time of D Day I was nine years old living at Cowes on the Isle of Wight. Leading up to that epic day the Island had become a garrison for American and Canadian troops.

I recall the summer blue skies filled with the noise of large numbers of silver aircraft, US bombers flying towards France.

I remember standing on a road above the railway track leading into Cowes Railway Station, looking out over the Solent, the water that divides the Island from the mainland immediately before what became D Day. There was just one mass of vessels as far as the eye could see that seemed to appeared almost over night each flying anti-aircraft barrage balloons.

Many years later, during 1980 I was travelling on the train from Vancouver through the Rocky Mountains, in the restaurant car I was joined at my table by other people, one a Canadian doctor returning from a event in Vancouver and as talked we exchanged where we were from. The doctor related that he was on the Isle of Wight waiting to take part in D Day.

Dan Draper,
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