Blitz Kids (63 page)

He later became the Chairman of the 43rd Wessex Division Old Comrades Association.

Geoff and his wife Julienne Vanhandenhoeve (photographed in 2010). She was trapped in Antwerp in May 1940 after the ship bringing her back to England was sunk. Geoff took part in the liberation of Antwerp in 1944. When they met in London post war, he introduced himself with the words ‘I liberated you’.

Pulzer in his pre-war army cadet uniform. He joined the Home Guard aged sixteen and used the skills he had learned in his school cadet unit to teach middle-aged Home Guard volunteers to shoot and carry out rifle drill.

Frank (John) Norman and his wife Sylvia celebrating their sixtieth wedding anniversary at their home in Orangeville, Canada. They met at a party to celebrate his homecoming after his release from a German prisoner-of-war camp. He is believed to be the youngest British soldier to have been captured during World War Two. After five years of captivity, he was still just twenty-one years old.  

The Normans in post-war Germany after their marriage.

Sidney (photographed in 2010) was a teenage Londoner who had originally wanted to train as a doctor. As a First Aid volunteer, he treated casualties in the streets around his London home on the first night of the Blitz. When his home was bombed, he was evacuated to Guildford and served in the Civil Defence. He later became an instructor. Post war, he continued his Civil Defence role and at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, found himself in a local government bunker plotting wind patterns to monitor fall-out in the event of a nuclear war.

John (photographed in 2010) joined the RAF aged sixteen. He was partly inspired by the film
Target for Tonight
and partly by the tension between his parents.

Being colour blind, he was unsuitable for either aircrew or to work as an electrician, as had been his original intention. Instead he served as a driver. At one point he even acted as the driver for the same pilot who had featured in
Target for Tonight.

The RAF only discovered his true age when he had to submit his birth certificate in order to get permission to marry. He had not only lied to the RAF, he had also told his fiancée he was three years older than he really was.

Derek Tolfree and his wife Peg (photographed in 2010). He had joined a nautical training college aged fifteen. At sixteen, he took the opportunity to transfer to the Royal Navy. He went to sea with the rank of midshipman and served on North Sea coastal convoys at the age of seventeen.

Peg was a typical London teenager who defied both her parents and the Luftwaffe to go out in London at the height of the Blitz. In 1944 she narrowly escaped death after being blown down three flights of stairs and out into the street by the blast of a V1 rocket which landed opposite her office.