大象传媒

My Dad was in the army as a gunner in the Royal Artillery normally based in Kent. We lived in Okehampton where I was born. However, at some time he was sent to Yeovil and me and my Mum and my younger brother went to stay with relations there. One evening, I must have been about 4 years old, I went to a fish and chip shop when we heard a siren and the noise of german bombers, my Mum collected me to take me home and on the way back I saw these german bombers flying over Yeovil dropping bombs. I know now they were Junkers. Late that night, I well remember being in the bedroom of the house we were staying in with Mum and Dad and my brother all sitting on a bed with the bombs dropping around us, with the house shaking and plaster falling from the ceiling and I was trying to get under the bed. As it happened, the house next but one from us was flattened. That is all I remember of that time.
In 1944, on my fifth birthday in April, I remember going to the Americans in their tanks in North Street, Okehampton and getting some gum, chum. I now realise that they were getting ready for D-Day. The marks that the tank tracks left in North Street are still visible on the granite kerbstones.

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