大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Wendy Wood of Hastings Community Learning Centre, a volunteer from 大象传媒 Southern Counties Radio on behalf of Mike Rose and has been added to the site with his/her permission. Mike Rose fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

Hastings and St. Leonards did not in the 2nd world war suffer from heavy concentrated bombing as that of the larger towns and cities as the likes of London, Coventry, and Bristol etc. but was subject to frequent raids by lone or small groups of fighter bombers, raids known as Tip and Run. Just over thirty miles from occupied France enemy fighter bombers came across at wave top height, turned over the town dropping their bombs and were gone in a matter of minutes. Often the first you knew of a raid was the sound of bombs exploding.
I was just turned seven when the war broke out so in the eyes of a young boy the war was a great adventure. Deserted houses with their gardens became new play areas along with the bomb sites that added after raids fresh play areas and materials to build camps etc. One such Tip and Run raid always comes to mind when I think back to those days and that was on Thursday 24th September 1942 at 4.20 pm. I had arrived home from school and was with my chums on our way to play in the rear gardens of a row of deserted houses in West Hill Road St. Leonards. The occupants of these houses had long gone to the safety of the country. These large gardens with their sheds and greenhouses were particular favourites with us boys at the time. The gardens were about 陆 mile west from the street where we lived and would have only taken about ten minutes to reach, and 4.20 pm. would have found us already playing in the gardens but for some reason or other we had decided to make a detour around a public park that boarded on the direct route that we normally took. So in actual fact at 4.20pm we boys were walking down Quarry Hill, a road running down the west side of the park and about 50 yards up from a home belong to the Institute for the Blind. This was the time when a group of German fighter bombers carried out a Tip and Run raid on Hastings and St. Leonards, dropping their bombs and machine gunning the streets as they turned for home. The bombs demolished the row of houses to whose gardens we were heading and the blind home just in front of us seemed to disappear upwards in a loud explosion. Standing in the road we were showered with broken glass blown out from the windows of other nearby houses. I can remember that we all ran back up the hill and down the road on the other side of the park while all the time debris was still falling about us from the sky. Smoke and the smell of the explosives was still thick in the air when ran down the street where we lived. Having some idea where we boys were going when we left home our mothers fearing the worst were all out in the street in a state of panic. Panic gave way to anger when they saw us and I just could not understand why! I was home safe and sound. Was I not?
It was later that we heard that 23 people were killed in that raid. Two of them blind people from the blind home, another 43 were injured, 21 of those seriously. A large number of RAF personnel were injured by machine gun fire, they had been caught out on a PT run.
Other memories of the war were of the Canadians that were stationed all around. Near where I lived were the stables and coach houses of by gone days and these had been taken over by the Canadians to garage their Bren gun carriers. We used to look forward to when they came back from exercises, we boys were allowed to hose down the mud from the vehicles and then rewarded with a ride on the carrier from the stand pipe to the garage, and there was generally the addition reward of a small payment. An added bonus was when the driver used to hold the brake on hard turn the wheel hard over and then release the brake. The carrier used to spin like a top that was great fun. My parents befriended a Canadian sergeant of the Scottish Essex regiment who unfortunately lost his life on D Day. Before he left he gave me his cap badge and shoulder flashes and I still have that badge today, it will no doubt one day go to one of my sons and I hope that knowing its history he will look after it.
Other memories of the Canadians was when they used to carry out mock attacks on a building called Marine Court, a large 13 story apartment building that during the war was occupied by the RAF. The building was defended by the RAF and the Canadians used to get us boys to wander around the streets leading to the building and report back the positions of the defending RAF, with our reports and ably assisted by the women who used to let them through their houses to detour the defensive positions those defending were never in with a chance.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.