Walt Reid

The author was born on Portland in 1930 in a terraced prison warder’s bungalow only fifty yards from the east cliff. As a child he would use footholds in the cliff wall to view the shipping traffic in Weymouth Bay where he watched the manoeuvres of the battleships Nelson and Rodney on occasion. As a youngster, from the same high vantage point, he witnessed in the dusk of 5/6/44 an armada of planes towing gliders flying very low overhead - the vanguard of troops starting the invasion of Normandy and in the early evening of DDay, from the same spot, looking down he saw a Spitfire fly over the rifle range butts some fifty below perform a Victory Roll. The exuberant pilot barrelling out over the Osprey and harbour and back to base. Seven months later the writer started a stonemasonry apprenticeship, later to become the apprentice master and finally a lecturer at Weymouth College. His interests now are doodling with words, very active at bowls and likes a round of golf in the summer.