大象传媒

I was born during the war, my father was in the Suffolk regiment who was captured as they landed and spent the war in a Japanese Prisoner of War camp and was forced to work on the Burma railway, for a long while, my mother didn鈥檛 know what had happened to him. I was nearly five years old when he came home.
My mother and I lived in Eye Suffolk and she had a job in a cafe on or near eye airport where the Americans were stationed when the planes came back from bombing raid they were often damaged, local could tell if a plane was in trouble, on one occasion she put me under the kitchen table, and I watched this plane crash in the garden, causing me to strain my eyes making me cross eyed this was the start of 16 years of treatment to rectify the fault which was finally cleared in 1960.
After seeing a surgeon, a Norwich Hospital who was Sir Stafford Scripps sister, she said my eyes were right for a correction operation, and performed what was to be a pioneering operation, I was just over 2 years old in 1944.
My mother recalls on a visit to me with her mother in hospital after the operation, me saying 鈥淟ook Nana I can find the toilet without any eyes.鈥� These were of course covered, once discharged it meant a fortnightly visit to Norwich hospital on the bus over a number of years.
Later I was fitted for glasses, I recall hating the glasses, and at every opportunity left them behind, but it was always the first thing my mother would check and when asked where they were I鈥檇 say I didn鈥檛 know, but she knew just where to look mostly the where on the white line in the middle of the road; strange they never got run over, several operations later my eyes were corrected.
During our time on the airfield I spent a lot of time with the Americans their name for me was Butch, but if they spotted me they鈥檇 call candy and I鈥檇 come running. My mother of course needed a pass to get to work and had made me a red siren suit and when I rode on my mum鈥檚 bike they鈥檇 call me Santa Claus.
After the war my grandmother made me a cowboy suit out of the German flag, I was a real tom boy and loved it, later after saving tokens from Trex lard I was able to get a beautiful set of guns and a leather holster, and my mother bought a parachute which was unpicked and made into a number of things; we still find uses for the cord today.

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