大象传媒

'This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Gwilym Scourfield of the County Heritage Team on behalf of Alan Fincham and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.'

Bombs: More Fascinating than Frightening to a Child
I was two when the war started. I lived in West Drayton. I hated the stench of that Anderson Shelter. I remember a neighbour approaching dad in his dressing gown.
鈥淲e鈥檝e had a bomb, Mr Fincham,鈥� she said.
鈥淣o you haven鈥檛,鈥� dad said.
鈥淵es we have!鈥�
Next day they found a bomb buried in the neighbour鈥檚 lawn. It had exploded and the ground had erupted around it. Next door鈥檚 greenhouse, however, hadn鈥檛 lost a single pane of glass. The amazing thing was that two doors down, beyond a wall, which had also remained intact, the leaded panes of glass on one side of their house had been completely reversed by the explosion. They nailed some mesh over the windows. Clearly, re-glazing was not felt to be economical.

On the same night bombs fell on Mrs McDermot鈥檚 and on Drayton Hall 鈥� Mr Vernon鈥檚 house. He was a director at HMV. It was shored up with huge balks of timber until 1948.

The park was ploughed over and used to grow potatoes, corn and other vegetables. There were artichokes where the Longmead School is now.

We had Land Army girls billeted with us. Cathleen and Beryl came to live with us from London. They stayed many months, working at the nurseries of Wild and Robbins, Market Gardeners. They worked in the fields. A later girl, Eleanor Roseman worked in the indoor peach houses. She brought lovely peaches home. Dad actually planted some of the seeds successfully and after the war won a prize at the horticultural show.

I remember once a bomber, returning home from Germany crashed locally. The entire crew were killed. We used to ride around on our bikes and would have explored, but we were given strict instructions not to go anywhere near. It crashed at Harmondsworth. Some say it hit the jib of a huge crane that was down there in the yard with an enormous pile of granite for the rebuilding of London Bridge. The plane was cut in two. One engine landed in the river.

On another occasion, I was fishing in the Colne. I heard sirens in the distance, but they seemed a long way off. I wasn鈥檛 worried, but, looking up at the low grey sky I heard the distinctive 鈥淐hug-chug-chug-鈥�.鈥� of a Doodlebug cutting out. Then I saw it, high up and falling. Suddenly it exploded in mid air in a huge fireball of orange and red. It had blown apart before landing. Probably it was hit by something, though I didn鈥檛 see what. It was so high up I saw the flash seconds before I heard the bang.

It was a fascinating sight, but not frightening. Somehow adults protected us from the fear we should have felt. At school there was a huge wall of sand bags across the Main Hall. We would six cross-legged looking up at the concrete blocks and scaffolding that protected us from having the roof fall in on us, though we were never fully aware of that. After raids, we would often go out looking for shell cases or bits of shrapnel. It was just another part of our everyday lives as children of World War Two.

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