大象传媒

At the outbreak of the war he thought that he was unlikely to be called into one of the
armed services. Mainly because of a badly set shoulder, damaged from a fall, but also
because a few years would see him beyond the age of conscription. Anyway, by 1939
he was working for a Midland firm manufacturing military aircraft; so he was already
taking part in the war effort.

However, if his services had been needed he would probably have found his earlier
experience in the army of some help. As his photograph shows, he had at one time
been enrolled in a rifle regiment; that was when he came of military age, after the first
world war armistice. He served for a relatively short period, around the time when the
war came to an official end in 1921.

Another WWI experience which may have been of some use to him in the new conflict,
was his knowledge of air raids. While his father was in the army in that earlier war,
being the eldest child, he had his duties then of helping mother shepherd his brothers
and sister to their basement shelter. Though it does seems he spent some of the time
watching the raiders overhead. He certainly saw the first German airship brought
down, as it crossed London in flames. He was so impressed that he got on his bike and
followed it to its crash at Cuffley. A round-trip of 24 miles. He was 13 years old, so for
company he took a younger brother with him - on the crossbar!

The chance to put those experiences to use came in the Coventry blitz of 1940. By the
end of the series of raids he and his wife were homeless, their flat having been
destroyed. The aircraft factory was out of action too, so they came south to London
and shared a home with his parents. Where they resumed warwork and, more air raids
and the like permitting, lived without further drama until the war鈥檚 end.

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