大象传媒

As I was born 6 months before the outbreak of WW2, the war years were very formative for me.My father was away serving as ground crew in RAF 617 Squadron (The Dam Busters) and I was brought up by my mother and granny. My father used to send me cartoons he had drawn depicting life in the RAF whenever he wrote home. When he was home on leave I used to help him on the allotment. From time to time as I was growing bigger I had to be taken to be fitted with new sizes of gas masks. I still have one of them to this day.
On one occasion I was asleep in bed when the air raid siren sounded. Before mother had time to take me down into the cellar two incendary bombs hit the house - one came through the bedroom window and one came through the roof and both landed on my bed! They caught fire and I was trapped in a blazing bed! My mother rushed up and threw buckets of water over the flames, dowsing them sufficiently to grab me and take me to safety, after which she called the fire brigade. The house concerned was 3, Holmes Street, Cheadle. Soon afterwards, another house in Cheadle - 245, Stockport Road was hit by a high explosive and totally destroyed apart from the front wall. Everyone in the house was killed as was the family father who was outside in the garden on firewatch duty. He was hit by a piece of shrapnel. The only survivor was a daughter and she was away at teachers training college. In 1947 the house was rebuilt and my parents rented it from the surviving daughter, living in it for many years and subsequently purchasing it.

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