大象传媒

The following stories are just short memories that have stayed with me all my life, they are not riveting reading but I thought that I would like other people who have not had the experience or WW2 to know a little of what happened
on the home front.
I was born 21/4/1938 and was 8 when the War finished. We lived in a very small village about one mile from a large Bomber Base. My father worked at the Power House at the Docks about 3 Miles away, although his main Trade was a Blacksmith. In his spare time mended boots and shoes having acquired the skills from his Grandfather. After the Aerodrome was built and the war was declared it rapidly filled with personnel the majority of course were flight crews, they would bring their flying boots etc to my father for repair. My first memories are really from the last two years years of the War. In our back kitchen my father had a tall set of shelving on which he kept all the shoes that he mended, they all had price tags on and when anyone came for their boots or shoes any family member in the house would serve them and collect the money. The top shelf always had several pairs of boots on it and nobody was allowed to touch them except for my father, it turned out that these were the boots that Pilots of other crew members had put in for repair and then had not returned from their mission over Europe.
Every now and again an Officer would come from the Aerodrome and collect and pay for these items, at first my father said that he did'nt want the money but the Officer told him that he had to account for it so it was best that he took it, he did but he kept it in a special box which he said he was keeping until the war finished and then he would put it towards a party in the local Public house called the "Cross Keys" for all the Servicemen that came.
This he did, the party was held on VE day and the Pub was open most of the day and I remember it well because my mother who incidently was an American and used to play the piano(mostly Classical stuff) but she could also play all the popular ones of the day and she was always in big demand. On VE day they insisted that she went to the Pub and play the piano, which she did. My father told me later that the village bobby was in the kitchen having a drink as well, however, someone stole his helmet and also when he went home he fell off his bicycle and ended up sleeping off the effects of the beer under a convenient hay stack by the Road side. Our tame Jackdaw,who had a habit of going down to the Smokeroom window sill at the Pub, was also legless as the Airmen always gave him a drink of their beer!

The next memory is from when I used to sleep with my Older sister who was sixteen or seventeen at the time and she used to count the Bombers taking off for a raid, and the she would count them when they came back, anyway this night we were awake when two bombers collided apparently they were circling the Airfield, one was taking off with a full bomb load and the other was on an air test when they collided in midair about a mile from the aerodrome there was a huge explosion and all the wreckage was scattered over a large area, there were no survivors. All the windows in the area were blown in including ours in the house front. The windows were replaced by the RAF and they used Italian prisoners of War who were in a camp nearby to do the work. After the war around wintertime in 1947 we were playing in the fields where we had several dens in the hedgerows, we had lit a fire to get warm and I was looking in the hedgerow for tinder when I found a large piece of Rubber tubing and on the side of it was a kind of pocket inside of which was a yellow or orange box kite which when assembled was as tall as we were, it was the best kite that we ever had but it did'nt last long as it was very delicate after you had assembled it. Later I found out that it had come from the Bombers that had collided and was out of a rubber dinghy that they carried in case they had to ditch in the sea, and the kite was used as a distress signal, or, it could also be used to pull the dinghy along if the wind was in the right direction of course. We were always finding bits of those bombers.

The last vivid memory was during the last year in the war, the aerodrome was never, as far as I know bombed by enemy aircraft but we had many come over the village on their way to bomb Hull etc, and we had several crash around us, shot down as they approached over the Humber river. One of these aircraft a twin engined one, was hit badly and it turned round to go back, as it came over the village very low it raked us with all of its guns several large calibre shells hit one or two houses, one shell passed over my cousin in her bed! it went through two brick walls but did not expode. The aircraft crashed onto the River Humber bank. Again after the war I was helping to dismantle an old Pigsty that we had, it was built of old railway sleepers and in three of them we found about a dozen 50mm bullets(I think) my father found out they had come from German aircraft that had shot us up.

Not much I am afraid but I hope these memories will contribute to your bbok.

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