大象传媒

The 3rd of September 39 was a Sunday which makes the 1st of September a Friday. Harry Tinker and I, who were works colleagues 鈥� and I use the word stupid works colleagues -went down to volunteer for a Territorial Army Unit. And the warrant officer in charge said, 鈥淵ou鈥檙e too young, and anyway you don鈥檛 know what you鈥檙e letting yourself in for.鈥� In other words, his words were, 鈥淏 Off.鈥�
However, on the evening of the Friday I was called out and I spent from Friday to Monday night . . . Friday I cycled all around Tyldesley etc etc., calling out the people who were St John鈥檚 Ambulance Brigade who were due to go into Naval Sick Berth etc etc.
Ultimately I finished up on the Sunday as a telephonist on the reports centre. There was Cissie Crook, who I would imagine was in her forties, and me. All of a sudden Neville Chamberlain indicated that war had broken out, and there was Cissie Crook, crying her eyes out. Now me, as a seventeen-year-old, I did not know what that was all about.

When my father, Ken Green, died earlier this year at the age of 83, we found a tape of memories he had made "as the muse took him." This brief vivid recollection was recorded on the 3 September 1999, the 60th year after the outbreak of the Second World War.

Dad later served in the Royal Signals, taking part in the D-Day landings and their preparation in the South of England, and continuing to serve until 1948 in Palestine.

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