Daily Mail

Follow-up

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JIM ASHTON’S account of his night in goodge Street deep-level shelter (Peterborou­gh) brought back memories of December 1954 and my stay. Having been given a draft to HMS Terror in Singapore, I was among a party of matelots who left Portsmouth to travel to London, where we spent the night at goodge Street. The bunker had been dug as an air-raid shelter during the war but was intended to be part of the Undergroun­d, though this never came about. For a time, Eisenhower and his staff were housed at goodge Street and carried out some of the D-Day planning there. I had little sleep on my stay, owing to the rumble of Undergroun­d trains which appeared to be passing within inches of my bed. Most of us were glad to leave in the morning. We travelled by bus to Blackbushe, Hants, where we boarded a Hermes aircraft for the Singapore flight. But the plane had an engine fault, so we went to hotels around Camberley in Surrey. I was among several sent to Frimley Hall Hotel for what proved to be a week, and it was December 16 before we went back to the airport. It was nearly dark as we passed over the great West Road and flew to Rome, then Nicosia, Bahrain, Karachi, Delhi, Calcutta, Bangkok and finally landing at Kallang airport, Singapore, after 73 hours! Jim Ashton asked when goodge Street ceased to be a transit camp for service personnel. This was when a fire broke out on May 21, 1956.

Frank Skull, Swindon, Wilts.

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