HARRY BULLOCK

During the early war years I was working as an apprentice joiner to Mr. Frank Carlill who was the village undertaker and joiner. Mr. Carlill was in the Auxiliary Fire Service and his household was one of the few which at that time had a telephone. When there was an air raid warning they would always get a telephone call and Mrs. Carlill would get me to ride my bicycle the length of the village from the school down to Catwick Lane blowing blasts on a whistle. When the all clear came I would turn out again, this time with a hand bell, and ride the length of the village once more.
In 1941 I remember helping Mr. Carlill make a coffin for a German airman who was killed when his plane was shot down on the road to Catwick.
In 1943 I was old enough to join up, which I did, in the R.A.F. at Padgate, Lancs, and trained as a Flight Mechanic, transferring to Weston Super Mare, Coltishore, Hornchurch and then Kew in London where I experienced the V1 bombs and the V2 rockets. Afterwards I was posted to Scotland on Sunderland aircraft and was finally with the liberation forces in Norway in 1945.