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15 October 2014
WW2 - People's War

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Bombing of Ford Airdrome

by Jillsapain

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Archive List > British Army

Contributed by听
Jillsapain
People in story:听
Clifford Copping
Location of story:听
Ford Airdrome 18th August 1940
Background to story:听
Army
Article ID:听
A1995500
Contributed on:听
08 November 2003

My father Clifford Frederick Lewis Copping Private 6405092 was born April 22 1923 like a lot of other "men" his age he lied about his age to get into the army and was duly accepted at 17 on the word of his mother that he was 18 into the East Sussex Regiment.

After six weeks training during which time he managed to defend a fellow squaddie from a hut bully by knocking him to the floor - only to be told by his Regimental Sergeant Major that he was now a member of the regimental boxing squad.
Soon after he found himself in a ring opposite a boxer from another unit who just happened to be a British boxing champion (the name Tonner comes to mind but I am not sure). Anyway the bell rang and he stood up and that is all he could remember the lights for him suddenly and dramatically went out.

After training was complete Copping spent the next six weeks guarding a railway tunnel somewhere in the south of England.

His next posting was to Ford Airdrome (not far from Chichester in Sussex), when his unit was attached to the Fleet Air Arm. His job was to man the radio of a gun pit on the edge of the airfield. The Battle of Britain was in full swing and although this airfield was a training field the Luftwaffa turned its attention to the area believing it to be operational.

On 18th August 1940 the airfield was attacked by JU 87B dive bombers and my fathers gun pit received an indirect hit from one, which killed and injured the occupants. I believe the officer i/c of the pit was killed.

After the raid rescuers found my father buried up to his neck in sand which had ruptured from punctured sand bags. "Here's Copping's head!" one said "I wonder where the rest of him is?" As they dug they found the rest of him and discovered that he had received a number of severe schrapnel wounds.

As he lay on a stretcher awaiting evacuation to hospital in his delierium he heard the last rites being given and thought the worst before passing out. Needless to say the rites were for some other unfortunate. Altogether I think there were 18 people men and women killed that day and there is a memorial to them outside Ford Open Prison which now occupies the site of the old airfield.

Clifford Copping was hospitalised for nearly a year during which time he had some skin grafting at East Grinsted where the famous McIndoe "Guinnea Pigs" of the RAF Burns Unit were treated. He was eventually discharged from the service as unfit for further active service - which may have been fortunate for him as I believe he had put his name down for glider pilot training - so he may have ended up at Normandy and/or Arnhem later in the war.

Unbeknown to my father as he lay in hospital at Chichester not 100 yards away from him, my mother Mavis Woodard was evacuated in a house nearby. They met in 1947 and were married for 41 years.

Clifford Copping then worked for the LCC driving a van moving peoples possessions from bombed out London to the provinces.

He died aged 77 in 2000.

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