Let’s salute the folks of Lincoln

READING of the ‘bomber boys’ and their memorial at Lincoln’s Bomber Command Centre (Mail) brought back my own experiences with the bombers, albeit from ground level. During World War II, I was a soldier in the 6th Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers, and we were involved in an offensive from the region of Nijmegen into north-west Germany. We were waiting in our twoman slit trenches for the order to move, when we became aware of the massive noise of aircraft passing overhead on bombing raids. As they did so, the sound of our cheering almost drowned out the noise of the planes. The people of Lincoln, where we were then stationed, and its villages always showed us such kindness and support. For instance, when we were on a route march, the villages we passed through would always have women at their garden gates shouting words of encouragement. I remember one even shouting at the sergeant who carried only a swizzle stick, to swap it for the heavy Bren gun I was carrying. She was not to know that he had been wounded at Dunkirk. On another occasion, when the pT squad had taken us down into Lincoln to run in full kit up the steep hill to the cathedral, a young lady passing by on her bicycle threw it to the ground as she jumped off, calling out: ‘Don’t you shout at those boys!’ The monument is said to be a fitting tribute to the bomber boys, and it’s certainly in the right place, too. Jim Mason, Mexborough, south Yorks.