大象传媒

The early part of the war on the East Coast the main defences were a few old navel guns, rifles, search lights, mine fields and scaffolding built on the seashore as a defence against boats landing.

Our Battery of 6 inch guns was stationed on the sand dunes near Yarmouth. We had no proper shelter for the duty watch engineers, who started the engins for the search lights, so we decided to build our oun shelter in the sand dunes. With the help of some drift wood from the beach, we made a very comfortable little room under the sand away from the cold nights and enemy aircraft.

Yarmouth was a target for the German bombers which frequently came across the camp and they were not too careful where they dropped their bombs, so we were happy in our little hole in the sand.

After about a year of frequent bombing, the Royal Engineers came along to replot the mine fields. They found that many of the anti tank and anti personal mines had drifted in the sand.

One morning we were sitting in our little hole in the sand, when a voice said "I say you chaps, would you like to evacuate your premises, for you have a large anti tank mine right on top of your shelter". Although we had been using it for a year, we did not wait to be asked again.

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