大象传媒

The People鈥檚 D -Day

I lived in North London throughout World War Two. I was directed from my work in a bank in Wood Green to a Government Training Centre in Islington. From there, in 1943, when I was nineteen, I was chosen to work for the Aeronautical Inspection Directorate, a branch of the Air Ministry. After further training in London (Buckingham Palace Rd.) and Manchester, I was sent to work at Harris Lebus in Tottenham, North London. Here they made the deHavilland Mosquito fuselage and the Horsa glider fuselage. They also made jettison fuel tanks for long distance flying. It was here I was working on D-Day.

The Lebus factory, normally furniture makers, turned over to Mosquito production, as the workforce was skilled in woodcraft. The Mosquito was known as the Wooden Wonder of Salisbury Hall, where it was designed in Hertfordshire. Night fighter pilot and chief test pilot was John Cunningham (known as Cat鈥檚 Eyes Cunningham). Ralph Hare, designer and Alan Copas, engineer, worked on the prototype.

My elder sister was working at Ediswans in Ponders End making valves for electrical apparatus.

There were hundreds of US servicemen in London, We three sisters
knew several of them. Some came for Sunday lunch and took us out for the evening. As June 1944 approached we noticed that all the GIs had gone from the streets, all leave was cancelled. In the early days of June we noticed army vehicles all moving south for 鈥極peration Overlord鈥�. We didn鈥檛 know what it was but we knew something was about to happen. People were saying, 鈥淚t鈥檒l soon be over.鈥� After five years of austerity, rationing, blackout and suffering bombing in the blitz, (London being bombed 57 nights in succession), it was good to know we were on the offensive.

We wrote to several soldiers when they went over to France and would follow their progress by way of radio, Pathe News at the cinema and maps of the war zones in the newspapers. We would receive letters from them, heavily censored with pieces cut out, making neither side of the page easy to read. We saw maps of the beaches, Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha and Utah where the troops landed. Sadly many of the Horsas crashed or landed in the sea and many men were lost.

The VI was Hitler鈥檚 next attempt to destroy London and we saw many of these 鈥榙oodlebugs鈥� pass over. If they passed over before the engine cut out we knew we were safe. 1 saw nothing of the V2 rockets that followed but heard they did a Jot of damage in some areas.

My sister鈥檚 GI came back from the war. They married and have lived in Michigan since 1946.

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