大象传媒

This story has been written onto the 大象传媒 People's War site by CSV Storygatherer Liz Norbury on behalf of Diana Kelynack. They fully understand the terms and conditions of the site.

We lived in Penzance, and on August 29, 1942, we were going to St Ives for the day, on the bus, when it was machine-gunned. I don't remember being frightened. I was eight and a half at the time, and as a child, you just accept things.
It must have happened at Whitecross, because as we were being taken off the bus, I saw the white Celtic cross there.
I had a bullet wound in my thigh, and I had to go to hospital, but I was released later in the day. My great-aunt, who had been asked to sit with me, applied iodine, which was the thing at the time. A fortnight afterwards, I swelled up like a little sausage. The doctor said to my mother: "It's delayed shock. Just keep her quiet".
At the time we were taken off the bus, my family were more concerned about my cousin Anthony, who was five. His knee was blown out. Rex Carr, who was the head of St Erbyn's School in Penzance, went up to West Cornwall Hospital to give blood - he lay alongside Anthony on the table.
From there, Anthony was transferred to a hospital in Oxford. He was there for months, and he was in calipers until he was 12 or 13.
I still have a cutting from 'The Cornishman' about the day the bus was machine-gunned. The planes were on their way back from an attack on St Ives. The report says: "The driver had a narrow escape, as a bullet whizzed past his ear.
"Injuries were caused to two young Penzance children - Diana Willoughby, aged eight, who was grazed by a bullet wound on the leg, and Anthony Allen, aged five, who was hit on the knee, and had to be removed to hospital; he is stated to be very ill.
"The casualties might very well have been worse, but for the action of a Canadian officer, who threw as many people to the ground as he could get hold of, and then flung himself on top of them as a shield, a quick-thinking and noble piece of work.
"The front of the bus, seen afterwards, was riddled with bullets."

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