大象传媒

When I was young, I lived in Moorhead, a suburb of Shipely, Yorkshire, then a separate town from Bradford. I attended a small school nearby, from which I walked home every day with my friend Angela. At one stage of the war, probably 1943 or 1944, all the streets where we lived were full of parked army lorries. A couple of empty houses in the neighbourhood were taken over by the War Departrment as billets for the troops who were guarding them.

They were an interesting selection of men. There were some very young recruits, and some older men - I remembet a kind Welshman. I also remember that one of the sentries was a Belgian who had flown over and told me he had landed in "Eden". This puzzled me greatly until I realised he meant "Yeadon" - now the Leeds-Bradford Airport.

Angela and I used to talk to these sentries. Their job was merely to see that no-one damaged the lorries. In those days vandalism had not been invented so they had quite a quiet time of it. Part of the time these lorries were there it was winter, and a Yorkshire winter can be bitter, specially when they had to be guarded all night. My mother used to make a pot of tea (remember that tea was rationed, and therefore valuable) and call the sentry outside our gate. She said it was remarkable how many men would suddenly appear when the word tea was mentioned - they seemed to spring from the earth, she told us.

One day, when we were coming home from school, all the lorries had gone. I have no idea when it happened, but believe it must have been shortly before D-Day.

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