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I was a schoolboy at the start of the war and during the preparations for ‘D’ day. The road I lived in was wide. The large army lorries used to stop there for a break and my mother and other families used to give tea and cakes to the soldiers. We children used to try and get sweets and things from the soldiers.

One day I watched a dog fight, that was the day that Reading Town Hall was bombed.

The school I used to go to, Wilson School was taken over for a hospital and so my school classroom changed to church halls for the Salvation Army, sometimes we had to go home early because the retired people wanted the halls for afternoon teas.

The American Army based in Brock Barracks gave me the chance to scrounge things like tinned peaches that we hadn’t seen before. The Americans were welcomed to our home where they learnt to play darts — and always brought more things for us.

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