大象传媒

I was sitting in a chair one day when a bomb fell nearby. It knocked the canary鈥檚 cage off, which hit me on the head. I was alright, but the blow killed the canary!

When I was a lad, I had kept pigeons. When the war started you couldn鈥檛 get food for them, but I couldn鈥檛 bring myself to kill them. I had to take them down to the butcher and he did it for me.

I worked as an apprentice in Oulton Broad, and also helped in the home Guard. I remember we were given machine guns to carry round even when not in uniform, in case the enemy invaded. I only had ten rounds on ammunition, so don鈥檛 know how much defending I could have done.

I worked on the boats. Every day, one old chap who worked there would collect up all the wood shavings in a barrow, take them to the foreshore, and burn them. One night a bomber had been over, and had dropped an incendiary bomb which had gone right through the large paraffin tank. Although it hadn鈥檛 exploded, it had leaked paraffin all over the area, and the water had a large slick on it. Well, the inevitable happened. The old chap took the shavings down, lit his pipe, and set fire to the broad. We had to move all our boats out of the way until the paraffin had burnt up.

I remember another time, a bomber came over and tried to bomb the Oulton Broad Bridge. He put his bombs either side, but missed the bridge. Lord Haw Haw came on the radio that night trying to claim that the bridge had been bombed, but I saw it and know they didn鈥檛 hit it!

After my apprenticeship I joined the RAF and worked on maintaining Mosquitos. We patched them up after reconnaissance flights. I did a bit of everything on them except the engines. I never touched the engines!

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