大象传媒

When I lived in Roebeck Road during the war, when I was at first school, there were air raids all the time. There were barrage balloons floating in the sky. Fisons, the works, was at the bottom of our road - an obvious target. We were not far from the docks as well. So we went into the shelters every night. We took with us a Primus stove to make coffee and tea.

My father was in the army. When dad came home on leave he'd never go into the shelter. He said that if they were going to get us, they would. Instead he stayed up and fired his rifle at any plane he saw.

I can remember a bomb on Hogarth Road that killed people. I must have been about seven or eight, around the middle of the war.

Once a pilot landed in a parachute. He was surrounded and they had big sticks and were poking at him. The girls took away his parachute - to make underwear with! Then they took him along saying, "Fritz come in and have a drink." They took him to the Gainsborough Hotel and then offered him a beer. It turned out he was Polish and was fighting for us!

Reproduced by Ipswich Museum with Mr Hutton's permission.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.