大象传媒

My father, John Rhodes was in the 8th Army Royal Artillery he fought in N Africa, El Alamain and through Italy. He told us he鈥檇 seen Mt Etna or it could have been Vesuvius erupting and the snow was pink. Not many peopled travelled abroad in those days so it seemed very glamorous.

While going through Italy they came across a huge dinner service that had been buried. It was Christmas so they unearthed it, took it out, used it for Christmas lunch, washed it, packed it all up, put it back where they found it. But about 5 minutes later a shell hit it and broke every piece of it!

One day shooting the big field gun he was not right at the front to start with but he was moving up as those at the front got killed. He got to the front and thought this is it. But thankfully he wasn鈥檛 killed, he was very lucky. He brought bracelets home for each of us, my daughter has mine, it was made out of a shell case from the gun that he鈥檇 been firing. It was marked with all the places that he鈥檇 been to.
My mother came from Brackley, she worked at an airfield in Hinton in the Hedges. One night she was in the canteen and a German plane followed a trainer plane in and flew along the ridge of the canteen roof firing bullets. The bullets hit right down the middle of the roof but nobody got hit, every body fled to the sides and no one got hurt!

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