大象传媒

I can remember one awful night when I was about 18 years old (1941) when i was living with my parents the Dyres at Chilton House, Chilton Polden near Bridgewater. It was 2.00am in the morning when i heard a great crash and bang. I thought it was the germans coming to attack us. In actual fact it was a British Hamdon Bomber based in the midlands which was returning from germany after succesfully carring out its mission to drop all its bombs over germany. The plane had escaped any air to air combat as the guns were still fully loaded but this succesful home coming was about to end in tradgedy. The plane was fast running out of fuel and the pilot asked permission to land at Westland Zolands airadrome, but permission was refused maybe the airadrome thought they were the germans aswell. So the plane came back towards Chilton Polden across the Somerset levels. The fog was rising thick and dense and still does to this very day. The pilot must have thought that he was flying over the channel and with the fuel tank nearly empty all three crew members (the pilot, the rear gunner and the navigator) jumped out of the plane with their dingys. All three were killed on impact with the ground instantly. The plane carried on almost silently and hit into the high fir tree in the drive and crashed into our house the right wing hit into my bedroom with a big bang. It all happened so fast. My father came charging into my room and fell over a chair in the doorway he was shouting are you alright and to get out quickly. I rushed out with my bedclothes on to check on the evacuees Irene and Berol Jackson from London. I thought that they must have been very scared as they had come to us to escape the bombings in London and now it had seemed to follow them. My father got my mother up and then went back to get my younger sister. She was still asleep and my father shouted at her to get up, she opened her eyes and said casually "what's the trouble?" I couldn't believe she could sleep through the noise of the crash and the fire. The engine of the plane had gone into the ground 4-5ft and had cut off our main water supply. One wing was in the fir tree and the other was in my bedroom the house was on tremendous fire and the machine gun bullets were exploding around us like a ferocious swarm of bees. We were lucky that we had two ancient water pumps outside which we used to give water to the horses. My father started pumping quickly into buckets and we started a human chain of my father, mother, sister the oldest evacuee and myself and we threw what seemed like hundreds of buckets of water up onto the roof. I ran up to the village and got help, some of the villiagers came down to help with the fire. We managed to keep the ferocious fire under control until the fire engine arrived from Bridgewater. The fire was put out and the house was saved. The next day the RAF officials arrived to retrieve the bodies and the plane debris my mother helped them. The RAF said how lucky we were to be alive, if there had been any bombs left on the plane then we would have certainly been killed by the explosions. The RAF brought the crews family down to show them where their sons had died. It was a sad time and my mother was very strong. I can't remember the names of the crew members but i have never forgotten them. Every time a plane goes by i always think of all those men, young sons, husbands and fathers who died for us to keep our freedom. They were all so brave and courageous and our war heros should always be rembered and never forgotten.

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