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ME & HITLER.
In 1943 I was 11, the wartime blitz was at its height and I had started at a new school that I hated. It was a bus ride of 15/20 minutes, but on this particular day the buses had stopped running, rumour was that the BSA and the Singer factories had been bombed. I could have cheered co’s my new school was right between the two! So it was with a light step that I began to walk to school (children can be quite cruel and unthinking sometimes). There was, in my mind, no way the school could still be standing and this was reinforced when I arrived by the side of the Singer factory and had to step over the hosepipes of the fire-engines lining the Coventry Road. Beyond the factory huge plumes of smoke arose from the BSA.
I turned into Oldknow Road and there was my school, not even one pane of glass so much as cracked!
From that moment on the war became a personal vendetta between me and Adolf Hitler. I was convinced that he had personally ordered the Luftwaffe to avoid the school at all costs — just to spite me!

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