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This story was submitted to the People's War site by Jan Bedford of Kent County Council Maidstone Library on behalf of Betty Haines and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

´óÏó´«Ã½ People’s War - Madginford Library Wednesday 21st July 2004

Mrs Betty Haines

Well I spent the war here in Kent, in West Malling actually, which was where I was born. I taught for one year before the war, I was at East Farleigh, and I used to cycle because there were no cars in those days. I cycled to and fro. I was there for most of the war at East Farleigh, teaching.

But my eldest brother was in - well all my 4 brothers went into different services - the eldest one was in the navy and he said would I go and live with my sister-in-law, his wife, because they had one small boy. So I went down to Leybourne.

I don’t know whether you know Leybourne, but before you get to the church there are some houses on the left hand side which are quite high and we lived in the last but one. I say that because you see, the Burham guns used to fire right across in front of us. Our bedroom looked out across the fields and we could almost see the Burham guns, and any German aircraft coming over -away would go the guns - and we would say ‘oh don’t fire at this one, let them go’, because invariably they would drop their bombs before they turned around and went back to London. I don’t know why we wished them on London, we didn’t really.

So I was living with my sister-in-law and the worst thing that happened was that the doodle bombs came, and they were firing over day and night. We had a big tree at the bottom of the garden and one of them had been hit by one of the Burham guns. And they used to fly straight over and then the engine would cut out of the doodle bombs (they were the flying bombs) and they would drop, when the engine cut out.

Well, this one had been hit by one of the guns from Burham and was coming at us at an angle, engine still going, and I woke up and I said ‘what ever is that dreadful noise?’ and my sister-in-law said ‘it’s a doodle bomb’, and I went down under the bedclothes. She got up, sat up in bed looking out and the house more or less disappeared, but we were still in bed. The bed head was out, they found that out in the garden. You could see the place, all the glass shattered and it went right through. I was under the pillow, but it hit her (glass) and her face was just a mass of blood - and the bedhead you could see it lying in the garden, it looked brilliant with all of this fine glass, except where her outline was.

Anyway it all washed off and she didn’t have a single mark. It was extraordinary, I thought she would be marked for life, she looked dreadful. They told us to stay there till they could get a ladder to get us down, not to move, and I just managed to crawl through what was left of the wall for the little boy. He was crying of course in the back bedroom. We sat there until we were rescued.

Then unfortunately after that, my sister-in-law went to her home, and I went back to my home. I was then asked if I’d like to go down to Devon where most of the Kent children had gone - a lot of the Kent children had gone because of the flying bombs - and help out down there. That was an experience, because I was an infant teacher, and I had to take secondary school children down to Devon for a few months, and then I came back again.

After that it was quite quiet. Of course the house was absolutely shattered, but they rebuilt it, and it stands now. They said ‘you shouldn’t have been alive’ - well if it wasn’t for that tree we wouldn’t have been, but it (the doodlebomb) hit the tree and went off, exploded. I’m still a bit nervous when I hear loud noises. It’s funny I can’t get over it.

The Barham guns — they a wide range, and they were up there just below what we call Barham Hill, on the Pilgrims Way, somewhere up there. They could fire at an angle right the way round as the planes flew, and they fired at the doodle bombs, which was a shattering noise, absolutely terrifying really. Sometimes they hit them (the doodlebombs) but generally they didn’t, and of course they had to get in touch with the aerodrome, because the fighters wouldn’t go up if they were firing, so they had to make some arrangement. I did receive one of the pilots - he was a Polish pilot, at Malling - and he started the idea of flying along beside them (the doodlebombs) and tipping the wing, and I saw that happen, which was quite an event. They did that quite a lot with them.

It was alright for London, they didn’t get to London but they did get to us down below, and that was quite an interesting sight to see. We had a lot of bombs, because they bombed the aerodrome quite a lot. I used to help with the forces, we had a rest room for them at night, and they’d come down and play games and get supper and so on. I used to help twice a week with that.

I was glad to get back from Devon, it was very pleasant to go down to Devon, but it was nice to get back home. And fortunately my 4 brothers all came back, quite safely, none of them were hurt. The eldest one, the one that was married, the one whose house I lived in he had the worst time. He was up in Scotland training and he went over on D-Day, he was in the Navy. He went to and fro for quite a long time. He used to bring us back little cuts of bacon and all sorts of things used to come back - whether they came from France or whether they came from the mess I don’t know. But he was in charge.

They had these small boats, tank landing craft he was on, he was a Petty Officer. He found one, they had six I think, in the crew and they took it in turns to be cook, well he thought they had wonderful supplies and he used to write home to my sister-in-law - ‘how do I do this, what shall I do with so and so’? He appointed himself cook, and all of the other officers of the squadrons used to say, ‘ Can we come over to your boat’? because they knew they would get something decent to eat.

I remember meeting a friend in Maidstone, I said something about doodle bombs but she said ‘but what about these rockets they’re sending over’?. So I said ‘well, I suppose they’re worse’ But she said ‘they’re not worse, because if you hear them you’re alright, but if you don’t hear them, you’re dead’.

I had friends who lived on the top of Wrotham Hill, they lived off the A20. They had a barrage balloon in their orchard. You could see them all the way to London, these barrage balloons, they used to come up and down. There were sorts of troops that were billeted there to get these balloons up and down for when the doodle bombs came over. My friend said that she hoped it (the doodlebomb) never hits the house, but I think there were hundreds of balloons, and their house was quite high - you could see a sort of big curve towards London where all these balloons were kept.

I remember when I was down in Devon I was stationed at Uplyme and I used to walk down on a Sunday to the sea at Lyme Regis. Most of the hotels would paint their roof like the Americans. I was walking down one day, and thinking I mustn’t go too far, as I shall be too hungry and we hadn’t got all that much - our rations weren’t very good. Out (of a hotel) came two Americans, and one coming down the road called out ‘what is it today’? ‘Oh it’s chicken again’ - I hadn’t had a chicken for years!

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