大象传媒

I was working as an artist at a small printers in Gt Yarmouth before I was called up aged 20.
After training we were taken to France.
I was in the 70th Field Regiment Artillery and my job was to protect the troop. We were marching to the front line along a winding country road, there were no hedges, just fields either side of the road and the occasional copse. Coming towards us were a crowd of women all dressed in long black skirts with black lacy shwls over their heads, they looked like a crowd of creatures from outer space!
We couldn't move so we pulled into the side. These women were carrying bundles of clothes in a white sheet, some carried babies and had a couple of tots hanging onto their skirts. Also some of them were pulling wooden carts with four wooden wheels. On the carts were the usual bundle of clothes and often a grandparent who might be holding a baby.
Then suddenly two Stuca bombers appeared and machine gunned and dropped bombs on the crowd. I had set my Bren machine gun up on a stand so I started firing at the aircraft.
On the Stuka they have some sort of contraption that means when they divebomb vertically the air rushes through and they scream - which is really frightening.
The whole episode only lasted a few seconds, but you can imagine the devastation it left behind. There were bodies everywhere. Mothers were crying ovev dead children, children were crying over dead mothers. Bodies were laying all over the place. No one had time to dash away.
After that I couldn't tell you what happened because I've wiped it completely from my mind because I don't want to know.
Although I saw it happen again several times over the next few years, this was my first encounter with war.

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