大象传媒

My mum grew up in Grimsby and I remember her telling us about the butterfly bombs which were dropped there. Grimsby was one of the first places, (in fact locals say that it was the first place) to have these bombs dropped on them. They were designed to be attractive to people, especially children, it seemed, and would explode when they were picked up.

There is a railway bridge which goes over Doughty Road in Grimsby which has many bullet holes in fired from the German planes as they flew overhead. Mum always said how badly Hull was bombed and how the sky was lit up for days with the burning of the city as a result.

Dad grew up in London and his elder brothers joined the forces. One, Jack, was killed before Dunkirk during the period known as the 鈥榩hony war鈥�. His eldest brother, Charlie joined the navy and served in it throughout the war, ending his career in the Admiralty. When dad was 16 he was accepted for PNB training which was training to become a pilot, navigator or bomb aimer.

My mum and dad both joined the RAF in 1943 and that is how they met. My dad flew in a Lancaster and was in the 35th Squadron at the end of the war. They were stationed in various places but I think they met when they were both stationed somewhere in Suffolk not far from Newmarket. I remember my mum telling me about a night she was late back to camp. She took a short cut across a runway to get back in time and found some foreign money there. She took it in to one of the officers in charge who told her not to say anything about it. It later turned out to be one of the places that the agents who worked with the resistance workers in France were flown out from.

I also remember when she told me about being in Cambridge when Glenn Miller conducted several bands playing together. That must have been something!

Mum鈥檚 older brother, Pat, was a pilot in the RAF and flew his aeroplane across to her airbase once to see her. He asked her if she wanted to go up with him for a quick flight and she said 鈥淣o thanks, I鈥檝e seen how you ride your motorbike. I鈥檓 not going up with you in that!鈥� Mum wasn鈥檛 keen on the idea of flying anyway but she certainly wasn鈥檛 willing to take risk going up with him!

Dad flew on many bombing raids over Germany and has many photographs taken on the way back from them

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