What
did you do in the war Dad ? |
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What did you do in the war Dad ? was
a question I could never ask him, because dad
was killed in November 1942.
I was not born until January
1942....
Dad 'Bill Bray' was from Lingfield and lived in
8 Stanhope cottages near the race course. He worked for Gordon
Jenner a local haulier driving his furniture removal wagons.
At some point he met my mum they got married living in 9 Mead road Edenbridge, where mum and later I was Born. She worked in the Vicarage and in later years at Edenhouse the school for young ladies at the bottom of Mill Hill. |
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As
I was friendly with the daughter of the house I can remember
playing on wet days in
the Mill on a swing installed in the lower room. My grand parents
both worked at Fairholme on the Hever road for the Souter family
as cookhouse keeper and gardener. Grandad also tending the
engines that charged the batteries that powered the DC system of
lighting in the house. An odd coincidence considering my future
occupation within the nuclear power industry and dads last task
in life a mission to destroy a plant connected with nuclear power,
must have been in the genes?.
As a child I knew very little about
my fathers death apart from the fact he was buried in Norway. Neither
was I the only child at school with only a mother to care for me,
just after the war most families had lost a close relative. Mum
worked hard to raise me on her own, some help came from SAFFA
but mostly cooking at the school and scrubbing
shop floors in the evenings. She
managed to save enough to take a trip to to see his grave
in the late fifties early sixties
with Doris Jenner, Gordon Jenners daughter, a long time family
friend. You may well have heard of her as she was in the news
last year when the German UXB was found in Lingfield following
some building work, being a resident when it fell during the
war. |
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"I
had made the trip to see dads grave in 1985 when a memorial
stone was unveiled by Princess Astrid".
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