大象传媒

I suppose you could say we were almost in the front line. We took a beating because we were so near to France. You could say the windows were put out every night. They kept it a secret. Everything they needed for an invasion was hidden on tHe Isle of Wight. The most important thing was the Pluto oil line. It went right across the Isle of Wight, down the cliff and then under the sea. It was picked up by the tankers refueling out at sea. It was a secret for quite a long time, they didn't want them to bomb it.

At night I was firefighting, we were taught how to put out incendiery bombs. We had a stirrup pump with water in it, one used to pump and one used to hold it. I wanted to go into the forces but Dad wouldn't let me. I worked in a small store in the day. At night we watched the buildings. We took a lot of daylight raids.

You could stand in the street and watch the dog fights in the Battle of Britain. It was exciting, we would cheer if they brought one of the enemy down. One of the Spitfires was shot down and it spiralled down into an old disused well nobody knew was there. The pilot was killed. If the Germans pilots came down they tried to set fire to their planes. I saw quite a few Germans who were captured. They were only like our boys.

The morning of the 6 June we'd heard the airborne go over. My brother and I got up early. We looked out and there was an armada of boats, so many you could have walked across them. We didn't know what it was for. They kept reinforcing the boats and it went on for months. We realised it was the invasion force for the D-Day landings.

I got married on July 11, 1943. My husband was a commando. They had the privilege of private billets and that's how I met him. He was billeted in one of the houses in our street. He was training on the island. After D day he went back to the main barracks in Porstmouth for while. He was proud to be one of Lord Lovett's first commandos.

He was demobbed in March 1946 and we stayed on the Isle of Wight for about four years. There wasn't much work so he came back to Leamington, which was his home.

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