大象传媒

"This story was submitted to the People's War site by CSV/大象传媒 Radio Nottingham on behalf of David Walter Harrison with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions"

Being a mere boy of seven at the start of W.W.2 I am sure our family of five quickly adapted to the wartime restrictions. The blacking out of windows and doors caused extra work for my hard working parents who had to provide light proof curtains and shutters of wood for our living accommodation and corner shop. The anti-aircraft precautions also involved scrambling into a Morrison shelter during the night whenever the air-raid siren sounded. The Morrison shelter consisted of a 6ft *4ft steel sheet 1i4in thick which was bolted to sturdy angle iron corner posts on an angle iron base frame. This indoor shelter gave protection from all but a direct hit and was the alternative to the Anderson garden shelter. Part of my play area was the mud salt flats of the Haven river bank close to Boston docks. Here in summer 1942 amongst macabre flotsam and jetsam I found an unexploded incendiary bomb. Upon taking it home in triumph I was compelled much to my disgust to immerse it in our rainwater butt before my father took it away for disposal. During our school holidays we helped out by picking potatoes or pulling peas and we were taken on the back of a 5 ton lorry to farms within a 10 mile radius. It was on these farms that we became friendly with German P.O.W. soldiers who were working there. I discussed things like the Hitler Youth Movement with one young soldier: he told me that it was similar but better than the Scout Movement with lots of healthy outdoor activities and what I had heard was propaganda. Apart from having been 'brain-washed' the Germans had had a good education and spoke better English than many here do to-day! One of the soldiers, in his tidy field grey uniform helped me with the German language which I took in the School Certificate.
During 1942 my friends and I found some Sten and Thompson ammo in an old hut previously used as the stores by a battalion of The Queens regiment. After filling our pockets with these bullets we took them home as souvenirs and kept them with bomb shrapnel and other artefacts. Some of these rounds were dropped into the top of a red hot stove on a fishing smack and the lid was closed. This produced a highly dangerous but exhilarating reaction showering hot cinders and debris out of the top of the stove pipe on deck and a BANG much to our boyish delight.

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