大象传媒

I was born on 13 May 1934, I started school in 1938 when I was four. When war broke out in '39, it didn't make too much difference to the children ... although there were some changes to the school with netting over the windows, blackouts and the gas masks in the boxes that we had to carry everywhere with us.

Things began to get scarce through rationing but because it was a village, people rallied round - WI made jam, local gamekeeper kept up supplies, and people shared.

Towards the end of 1940, things did get to hectic. There was a searchlight installed in the village, and ack-ack battery next to it. We were ten miles south of Derby, so we were in a gun-defended area or GDA because of Rolls Royce factories in Derby.

There was more damage done to the village by shrapnel more than bombs!

What they did between the village and Derby was build decoy buildings, surrounded by bails of straw. The Home Guard set fire to the straws, and the German bombers hit the decoy buildings ... there are still ponds there today in the craters. We used to go up the following morning and see the white patches where the incendiary devices had been dropped ... we would take them home and be shouted at by the local bobbies. Only one aircraft every got through to the Rolls Royce factory, but it was shot down.

They used smoke screens around the factories and the River Derwent was sprinkled with coal dust so that it wouldn't reflect up in the moon light and act as a guide to the bombers.

My mother came home one night - she was an air-raid warden - and told me that someone was "getting it" that night. There was a massive red ball in the sky ... it was the bombing of Coventry.

My father was a lorry driver ... the next day after the bombing of Coventry, he was called there to help clear the rubble. Buildings had collapsed in on themselves ... the local cinema with 3,000 people in at the time, was completely demolished.

I saw a lot more than most people ... I would ride wtih my father in his lorry, helping to deliver food and supplies to the camps and airfields. We had to race around the local roads with no lights on the vehicle. Very often you'd meet tanks and armoured vehicles who'd stop the lorry and make us take shelter in a dug-out because of air-raids.

We'd be at the airfields in the morning ... when aircraft were returning ... they were in a real mess ... engines missing, tail-planes shot away ... I remember seeing one aircraft break-up on landing ... and watched the aircrew just walk away.

We went into the mess room and get chocolate and treats ...

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