大象传媒

Broken Heart

This story has been entered into the site by Jack and Ben on behalf of Robert Thompson and we fully understand the conditions.
I was born on the 5th of October 1931 and I survived the 2nd World War as a dirty, scruffy chimney boy. I was evacuated from city life in Liverpool all the way down the country to the train station of Cornwall, via the train from Newcastle to Devon and the interchange train to the centre of Cornwall.
One of the my experiences that was the difference in the smell between the city air and the countryside air of Cornwall. The smell of the city was disgusting and the colour of the air was not identifiable due to all the pollution of the factories; the air in Cornwall was clear and smelled very clean like a new car.
I stayed with couple called Lawrence and Janet McKee who are now passed away and another evacuated boy called William Graham.
One of our first adventures that William and I had in Cornwall was our first day at school both people who lived in the countryside and went to that school everyday were crowding around us and asking us what our lives were like in the massive city of Liverpool. We weren鈥檛 both from Liverpool as William was from West Denton in Newcastle.
The most frightening memory I could remember was on the 13th of September 1942 when I was 11 years old. On this occasion a German bomber plane went flying over a field where we were playing. We started running away but what we didn鈥檛 realise was that we were running into the path as the plane was falling down. The British resistance troops had shot at it and the tail was on fire. The plane was falling very fast. We kept on running and when we both stopped the plane came down and hit the ground. We pulled the dead German body out of the rubble and we took his knife which had the Nazi sign on it. This is one of the favourite things I have got from the Second World War as every time I show it to my grandchildren I get upset. They get happy as I tell them I survived through the war. With all the adventures I have faced with a German bomber and stole his knife and will cherish this for the rest of my life and will hand it down as one of my most valuable belongings of my life.

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