大象传媒

I am submitting this story on behalf of my husband and with his full approval.
Alec was born in November, 1935 and consequently for most of his childhood the country was at war. The family lived in Beltinge, near Herne Bay in Kent. The clifftop was their back garden, the beach and the glen (a local wooded valley) the children's playgrounds. Along with his older sister, Pam, and many other neighbourhood friends including Raymond Reynolds and David Clutterbuck, Alec lived a life of freedom and adventure. He had taught himself to swim in the sea by the time he was 6 and was often found tackling the Army Assault Course which was set up in the glen.
Because of the vulnerability of the area to invasion by sea, defensive forts were erected in the nearby Thames estuary, poles were driven in all over the beach to prevent boats from landing and barbed wire was put down the middle of the road. Unfortunately, Alec's bungalow was on the wrong side of the barrier and so still not protected !
Raymond had a habit of collecting hombs, many varieties of which were regularly washed up on to the beach, and then storing them under his house! Alec has a healthy dislike of all explosives and refused to join in this collection process. However, one fateful day when he was about 9 years old, which he still remembers vividly, they were all playing at Raymond's house when he and David decided to investigate one of the bombs more closely and find out how it was put together.
Fortunately my mother-in-law had always been a stickler for having regular meal times and no matter where he was or what he was up to Alec would, without fail, be home for his dinner at 1300 hours on the dot. This obedience to family rules (and his love of food!) thankfully, literally saved his life.
Raymond and David were sadly not so lucky. Having tried unsuccessfully to get into the bomb with a hacksaw they then resorted to a chopper. As Alec entered his back door, five minutes walk away, there was an enormous explosion and his two friend, at a very young age were both fatally wounded . One died that night and the other the next day.
At the funeral, the first Alec had ever attended, the hymn, "There is a green hill far away," was sung. Whenever Alec hears that now, at almost 70 years old, it still sends a shiver down his spine and sadness for his lost friends and their families and thankfulness for his own narrow escape come to his mind.
That is his abiding memory of "The People's War".

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