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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Sarah Housden of Norfolk Adult Education’s reminiscence team on behalf of Raymond Woolerton and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was born during the war, and my recollections of it are those passed down to me by my parents and uncles. My Uncle Walter couldn’t fight in the war because after falling out of a tree he had fits. He wasn’t even in the Home Guard. Uncle Jimmy wasn’t let into the forces because he had a hair lip. My mother’s brother Stanley was in the Royal Tank Regiment in Singapore. When he came back he was brown as a berry.

My father was in a Prisoner of War camp after being captured in France in 1939. He had been in the army as a ‘Regular’ up until 1938, but had discharged himself, only to be called up in 1939. I remember him telling me that his mate went grey overnight in the Prisoner of War camp. They had to march 14 miles there and back each day to a cement factory. If any of them fell down with exhaustion, the Germans would just stick a bayonet in them. After the war my Dad continued to be affected by his experiences. He had night sweats, and often used to go on a milk and cheese diet for months because the cement dust had affected the lining of his stomach.

Dad said that he survived the army and the Prisoner of War camp because as the oldest child in his family he had always had to work hard. Dad described what he saw happening to the Jews in Germany while he was a Prisoner of War. He saw them being taken into the gas chamber — children and adults together, and all of them naked, with numbers tattooed on them.

I was born in Lakenham in Norwich. One day a bomb was dropped about 200 yards from where we lived but it didn’t go off. If it had then I might not have been here today.

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