大象传媒

This story was added to the website by a CSV volunteer on behalf of Dennis Bicknell, who has given his permission for his story to appear on the site, and understands the terms and conditions of the website.

My name is Dennis Bicknell, I was born on the 4th May 1931 and remember the war very well as I lived in Twickenham Middx and like most small boys followed all the events that were taking place.

I had a map of Europe and, from the newspaper reports I used flag pins to identify the various battles.

My brother was a POW in Stalag 4B having been shot down on the Penumend where the Germans were developing and building the V2 rockets. He was a member of the Caterpillar Club and presented with a lapel badge which had Ruby eyes as this indicated that he had bailed out from a burning aircraft. He landed in the North Sea and swam for a long time before he realised he could stand.

My father who had fought in the First War was a tug boat captain on the River Thames. A major part of his duties was taking high octane fuel from the distributing centre at Walton on Thames into Central London. I used to spend most of my school holidays with him on his boat. A feature about carrying this fuel was that it gathered heat from the Sun and on a cold day I used to lay prostate on the barges to keep warm.

As the war progressed the Germans started sending over V1 rockets and I watched these many times landing and blowing up in our area. One day when I was with my father on his fuel run a V1 rocket came from the South with it's familiar engine noise, then there was silence and we knew that it going to land nearby. When the rocket motor cut out they sometimes landed on the same course but often they veered away and landed somewhere else. In this instance the rocket passed over us, veered and then went back over the River and landed to the South. I was really frightened if the rocket had landed on our barge there would have been a cataclysmic explosion.

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