大象传媒

I can remember my Father rushing home from work, hearing that WWII had been declared. He rushed to the Fifth Sussex Territorial Unit based in Hastings. Then I can remember St Leonards Pier being blown up to prevent the Germans landing on it.

Then the evacuee's arriving from London, they soon realised this was a bad move because the German bombers arrived shortly after, and the RAF Spitfires and Hurricane's were trying to shoot them down in the sea and on the countryside before they reached London.

Meantime my Fathers regiment as part of the British Expreditionary force were in Belgium in retreat back towards to Dunkirk. My father has learned one of his younger brothers had been killed on the retreat (no time to mourn) His platoon, as part of a small force was sent back to delay the German Army's advance.

He was trapped in the open by the German Armoured cars who sprayed them with bullets. He and his mate made a run for it, his mate was killed and my Father was shot with what prooved to be seven sharpnel wounds.

The Germans left him for dead. Somehow my Father was found and taken to Dunkirk after some days on the beach he was brought back to England.

My Father was very ill in a Hospital in Kent and my Mother decided he needed his family near him if he was to survive. We got some lodgings near the Hospital and visited my Father daily. The visits to Hospital were not very nice, many of the Soilders and Sailors were here injured.

The area we were now living in because of the bombing meant spending every night in a Air-Raid shelter in the garden. You could hear the bombing and gun fire. As my Father got stronger and the bombing got worse we went back to Hastings.

Nearly everyone had been evacuated to Somerset, we joined my Grandmother with my Mother and sisters who worked on the land doing vital farm work. My Father was out of the hospital and recruited for the newly formed R.A.F. regiment and became a flight seargent and he was posted to TopCliff Aerodrome in Yorkshire.

We joined him once again living on a Farm near the Airfield by the runway. My Fathers job was to train the Canadian air men how to defend themselves and the aerodrome.

From TopCliff the Lancaster Bombers were attacking Europe and many of them were not coming back, and those that did come back quite often with controls shot off, and had difficulty in landing and were crashing all around us too.

Once again we were in danger from our own planes and not just the German one's, so my Mother decided to return to Hastings.

Most nights were spent in the Morrison Shelters because the bombers were still going over. There was a German Prisoner of War camp and us young boys used to sneak in from the fence and watch them play football, including some of whom were German International footballers and they even asked us to join in!

Hooray! The War is over in Europe. There were street parties and everybody was happ! There was one last scare for my Father, he was told to prepare to be posted to fight the Japanese, luckily this didn't materialise.

To conclude I feel that Wars are a waste of time, life and money and we must find better ways of solving world problems.

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