大象传媒

Although my parents and I had moved to Exeter, we still had all our furniture in the house on the Isle of Wight, which was temporarily let out. On D-day plus three my father and I crossed to the Island from Southampton (we still had our Isle of Wight Identity cards). Southampton Water was crowded with military shipping of all descriptions. There were spare parts for Mulberry Harbour and some enormous floating steel bobbins which I imagine had been used to unwind Pluto, the cross Channel fuel pipeline. One large tank landing craft had much of the stern blown off. In the Solent there was almost enough shipping to walk across the the Island; our ferry suddenly shuddered, and came to a halt. The reason became obvious as a ship crossed our bows with "AMMUNITION" painted in large white letters along its side. My other memory of the same day concerns walking through the ruins of lower Southampton from the station to the ferry along what had been a street lined with trucks full of American soldiers. I often wonder how many survived.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.