大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer from Lincolnshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of John Chappell and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Chappell fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

The death of our sailor neighbour Alan Dawson saddened our little tightly-knit community very greatly. Alan had sailed across the world as a crew member of a capital ship, to come home on leave, but to call upon his girlfriend first in Coventry. During his stay in the house of his girlfriend鈥檚 parents, a bomb fell. The bomb struck this one house with a direct hit, killing the four people contained there outright. Alan had been a happy, friendly young man. His own two parents, meanwhile, were waiting for his coming home to pay them a visit, beyond Coventry.

My mother was continuing to write to the soldier sons of our extended family. My cousin George William, confined now in a German POW camp, informed my mother in one of his letters that he was repairing the jackboots of his German captors. In civilian life George had served the disabled in and around the town of Kilmarnock by making special pieces of footwear for them. He survived the war but after so long a time as a POW he was, naturally, a much changed man.

It was about this time that my class teacher Mr McLennan left Morley for other pastures. The sad rumour followed his going that he had been unable to maintain a suitable discipline, yet I had liked him. He had shown me and others the mainly six-sided shapes of snowflakes through a convex glass on one of our woodland visits. He was replaced by a Miss Turnbull, the daughter of a new Methodist minister. Miss Turnbull was well-respected but not universally liked.

The year was 1941. The appearance of the 鈥済as van鈥� came another surprise to us. All the Children of the Borough had to visit the vehicle, which was painted a sombre black and parked in the shadow of the town hall. I remember the visit only too well:

THE GAS VAN

The visit鈥檚 gas van awaits here by the kerb:
The town hall clock looks down upon its vane.
Children are walked now into a soft rain
Of gas, a misting haze. One warden鈥檚 鈥渂arb鈥�

Here is to lift mask edges with a finger-end,
A rush of burning gas afflicts my eyes;
And one girl murmurs, yet not one child cries,
We children come to know a treacherous hand

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