大象传媒

A Little About Myself

My name is Leslie Turner and I was born in 1928, much to my regret at the time I was to young to follow my brother into the RAF during the war years, I was however a boy scout having started my scouting career as a cub.
During the war we scouts spent most of our spare time collecting waste paper and scrap aluminium utensils, all the scouts in Burnley, my hometown used an old shop as a collection point where I was more or less in charge of the sorting, as well as the collecting of scrap.
My weekends were mostly taken up acting as runner to the local Home Guard and on one occasion when the Home Guard were having an exercise taking the part of defenders of the town whilst members of the real army acted as the 鈥淓nemy鈥� attacking the town, for this excise I was acting as runner to the men guarding the cross roads leading into the town. The Home Guard had their post on the roof of what was known locally as 鈥淲illy Holts Billiard Works鈥� later taken over by 鈥淩iley鈥檚鈥�, the name often seen on the TV snooker tables.
This building stood on the crossroads between Accrington Road going more or less East and West, and Liverpool road going in a Northerly direction and Rossendale Road in a Southerly direction. From the roof of this building there was a clear field of fire along all four roads as well as of Rosegrove Railway Station and of greater importance, at least to the German Air Force Lowerhouse shunting yard the main yard in that part of Lancashire. After the war a map was fund, (I understand at a Luftwaffe bomber airfield) showing the shunting yard and surrounding area in great detail, this
Map was later reproduced in the local paper.

At the top of the walls of Willy Holts Billiard Works was a wood parapet of about two foot six inches used to advertise the ownership of the building, behind this wooden wall was a small walk way about twelve inches wide giving just sufficient room to walk between the wooden wall and the shallow pitched roof of the building.
It was in this restricted area that we took up our position on the Sunday morning in question, we hadn鈥檛 been long in position before a shower started, not much rain but just sufficient to be uncomfortable and to make the act of walking on the roof tiles a little dangerous. There wasn鈥檛 much going on to occupy either me or the home guard until a policeman decided to walk past beneath us and ignored the Home Guards challenge, this snub couldn鈥檛 be allowed to continue and so with out a word to any one three of the Home Guard took it upon them selves to attack him with 鈥渉and grenades鈥�, in actual fact these were just small sweet bags filled with white flour which exploded very nicely when thrown. Only two actually hit the policeman but since there was a fine drizzle falling they made a real mess of the policeman鈥檚 uniform, I believe there was an enquiry as to who was responsible but since it didn鈥檛 involve me I never heard the outcome of it.
Later in the day I was required to take a message to the local HQ, before I arrived I was told to put my gasmask on since there had been a simulated gas attack by letting off a teargas cylinder in the HQ building, I was able to go into the building and deliver my message OK but on the way out someone hit my gasmask allowing some of the tear gas to get into my eyes and that was the end of my exercise for the day as it wouldn鈥檛 have been safe for me to go back up on the roof with my eyes streaming with tears.
As soon as I was old enough I left the scouts and joined the ATC later joining the RAF where I was to meet my wife, Barbara (Knee Minty) a WAAF nursing orderly.