| OCR Text |
Show LE LI ERI T A DALE u u t 16 2001 tran port send f easdale. I wa a lance but I was promoted to lance bombardier. o one day I was called to the office. And they said "Teasdale, you're going abroad. You re going off in charge oftransport." I said, "Oh, am I?" So they said, "Yes, we're sending you up to Liverpool." And somebody else had been up and loaded a big truck. WIN: Before we go there, let's go back a little bit. When did the Germans start bombing London? Was that before you got ... ? LES: Yes. That was in-between when I called up in 1940, and when I went abroad in 1941. WIN: So you were out of London? LES: I was down on the Isle of Wight anyway. We watched the planes come over the island. They were headed for London. When I went home on leave I had to go in the shelter. My mother said, "Come on, come into the shelter." I said, "What for?" They said,"Oh, you'll know in a minute." And that's where we slept, you know. We'd go down in the shelter. So I thought, oh, boy, I'm glad I'm on the Isle of Wight. I couldn't stand it. It was bad. My brother-he wasn't called up straightaway. My oldest brother eventually got called up. Any my second brother-! was the youngest-but my middle brother, he was helping in the business. And you were allowed to keep the business. You know, they didn't want anything to happen. So he was exempt from going in the army. But he was called up into the fire service; the AFS, the Auxiliary fire Service. And, quite honestly, that was worse than anything because he was up in London during all of the bombing, and fighting fires, and things. And shrapnel was bursting all around him. He said it was pretty bad. Fortunately, he came through. But that happened. And it was just chaotic up in London. How they survived I don't 13 |
