大象传媒

I was 14 or 15 at the time and I remember there were 2 lads of 18 that I knew. One of them went into the army. he was sent to Dunkirk, to take part in the landings but was injured before he even got off the boat and was sent back home to finish his war here. The other lad went into the navy and on his first trip the boat was sunk and he was killed.

in 1942 I was 14 and working at Peckwash Mills, Duffield where I was a leather glove cutter. We stored rations for the Government which came from Nottingham. This included 260 tonnes of sugar, 40 tonnes of carnation milk and 30 tonnes of dried peas.

I remember being in the back yard one evening. My mother called me in and clouted me round the ears as she said I'd been dragging a stick along the side of the house and making a racket. The nose she heard was actually the sounds of the search light at Horsley Woodhouse being machine gunned. This was about about 400 yards away from our house.

When the sirens went off we always took for granted that we were safe in that area and the bombs would fall on derby instead, although a bomb did once drop near us but didn't go off.

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