大象传媒

This is Sandra Cooper's story - it has been added by a Volunteer from Crawley 19th Sqdn ATC, with permission from the author, who understands the terms and conditions of adding her story to the website.

My father was in the RAF in the war. I was born the day my father was demobbed. So his number is on my birth certificate. My parents were married in 1940 at St Peters parish church. A month after this my father went into the RAF and served in the Middle East.

My mother worked in Brighton where she did fire-watching (to see if any bombs were coming), parachute packing and worked in an ammunition factory where I used to carve my initials into the guns.

My father saw the holy sights in Palestine and the pyramids in Egypt. Wherever he went he took photos which I still have today. He often wrote letters, which were saved on my behalf. He always sent photographs, booklets of the lands, send dry flowers. We later went back there as a family and he showed us the sights.

He worked in the Middle East for three and half years. I鈥檝e still got his 4 medals, which goes down to the eldest child. He found a songbook in Italian and a photograph. We got news that Tobrok had fallen and my father worked there. We later found out that he had just left, so luckily he didn鈥檛 get hurt.

I was invited to show a Copthorne Junior School my dad鈥檚 medals and they were extremely interesting.

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