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This story has been submitted by Alison Tebbutt, Derby CSV Action Desk on behalf of David Askew. The author has given his permission, and fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

One thing you don't hear about very often is the blackouts. There wasn't a glimmer of light during these times. Even your bike light had to be painted out. You would be fine on moonlit nights, but on other nights you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. What you could sometimes see was the flash over the bombs falling over Derby, and even in Birmingham. A lot of people haven’t seen a pure moonlit sky, without the obstruction of buildings and pollution. Sometimes it looked like a box of jewels in the sky. It could be quite beautiful.

In 1940 I'd just started work at Marston's Brewery. We would all take turns on Fire Watch, from the boss to the office boy. In 1941 I joined the Home Guard. That was quite good. I did enjoy it, though we had very little in the way of equipment.

Eventually we got allocated some hand grenades, to get practice. They were all in a box and the detonators were in a separate tin, and these were all kept at the Albion Hotel in Burton. Somehow, somebody dropped the box at the top of the stairs. Fortunately they didn’t go off!

When we took them off for practice, our Sergeant held one in his hand as he described to us the best way to throw them. The funny thing was that he had been holding these grenades for so long his hand had frozen. So, when he threw one, it went three yards instead of thirty. I’ve never seen blokes run so fast in all my life!

Near to us was a little ravine called Shobnall Dingle. There was a bank on the other side of the road. We put a big drum of oil into the bank, placing behind it a vertical piece of drainpipe. The idea was that if the Germans were to march up the road we could drop some explosives down this drainpipe and get them. I don’t know to this day whether that idea would ever have worked!

I eventually finished my training and ended up in the Isle of Wight. One day I visited the Dentist as I needed a filling. This was around the time that the Germans were doing sneak raids. I was sat in the dentist chair, when all of a sudden we heard the whistle of a falling bomb. A German bomber had spotted a minesweeper sailing off. The dentist shouted ‘get down!’ After this attack ended the dentist turned to me and said matter-of-factly, ‘right, lets finish that filling.’ His nerves couldn’t have been shaken that much, he did a good job of that filling and it lasted nearly thirty years.

Shropshire was next, when I went off to another Squadron. We were developing a beam to help pilots get back to their carrier. If the weather was bad and we shut the squadron down, there always had to be a duty fitter and rigger on duty. There was one particularly appalling day I can remember. Suddenly, a Tiger Moth came in to land. As I grabbed a wing tip, I got bucket load of water down the back of my neck. I cannot repeat what I said to the pilot, though it was a pretty good description of the state of the weather! I remember how sorry I was when the pilot took off their mask and it was a really pretty girl. I quickly apologised, but she just turned to me smiling and said ‘I agree with you entirely!’

I got requested to go to the Grumman Aircraft Corporation in Seattle, everyone was really jealous. I then fell off the platform at Stoke during the blackout. A postman picked me up and took me to the Infirmary. I had broken it. Now this is a story of how the war is about luck. Over a year later, a bloke asked me when I should have gone, and told me I had been very lucky. A boat full of men going to Seattle had gone down, leaving no survivors. That broken ankle ended up saving my life.
I then went to Sri Lanka, and was based where the Tsunami recently hit. It was great in some ways. It is a beautiful Island. It got so hot out there. There was an R.A.F. station there. They were very short of blokes who could do a particular job out there. I lived in a thatched hut right next to the beach.

The Catalina flying boats went from Sri Lanka to Darwin, Australia. These men were very brave as this route went right through enemy territory. We used to wait for them on the beach, cheering as they returned. They all came back while I was there, it was great.

Eventually the war began to end, but we were still working hard preparing for the fight back through Japan. Then the Atom Bomb dropped and Japan was forced to surrender. We all then breathed a sigh of relief, as we were then able to come home.

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