大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Bernie Hawkins and has been added to the website on behalf of Bert Hookey with his permission and he fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

While I was stationed at Foulness with 519 Battery anti-aircraft guns, I and my mate Charlie Wheatcroft used our forty-eight hour leave to go up to Birmingham, his home town. (It seemed hardly worth it to go all that way for two days.) On our way back we caught a train at Fenchurch Street Station at about ten o鈥檆lock at night. Just as the train was about to leave, we saw two ATS girls running along the platform, so I opened a door to let them on. This got me the biggest telling off of my life from the guard, who had just been up and down the train closing all the doors.

We started chatting to the girls 鈥� they worked on an ack-ack rocket battery at Annerley 鈥� and I noticed one of them, Eva, had an Isle of Wight accent. I asked her where she came from and she said it was a small place that I wouldn鈥檛 have heard of. I said, 鈥淲here is it then?鈥� 鈥淔reshwater,鈥� she said, 鈥淲here do you come from?鈥� 鈥淣ewport!鈥� I said.

We carried on chatting and I asked her if she would mind me writing to her, so we swapped addresses. We were pen-friends (like a lot of people in wartime) for about six or nine months. Sometimes, on evening leave, we would meet up in Southend and go to the pictures or to the top Alexander Hotel (there were two of them with the same name). They had an upstairs room where anyone who fancied themselves as a musician, singer or whatever could get up on the stage and perform. At the end of the evening we would shake hands and say goodnight.

One weekend when we were both home on the Isle of Wight I took her to meet my parents. She fitted in with the family really well and my mother and father looked upon her just like one of their daughters. Then one day she said she would like to go shopping in Charlotte Street in Portsmouth. We stopped outside the window of Samuels, the jewellers. She pointed to an engagement ring in the window and said, 鈥淚 like that one鈥� and that was that! We married in June 1943 and were married for 62 years. That chance meeting with Eva at Fenchurch Street was the best thing that happened to me during the War.

Bert Hookey's story of 219 Battery, 57th Wessex Regiment and the bombing of the Sinah Battery can be read at A7566870.

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