大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Emma-Jayne Harrisson from The Folkestone School for Girls and has been added to the website on behalf of Beryl Langston Field with her permission and she fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I lived in Folkestone when war broke out and I was 19.
I had just finished teacher training 鈥� I was on a supply job in Elmstead and Hastingleigh it was the summer of 1940 and I was in a second-class school. It was the summer holidays and one teacher had to stay in case of an invasion, so the children could be evacuated. I stayed for the first half of the holiday into August.
My landlady, Mrs Mac suggested we could go for a nice quiet picnic one Saturday afternoon. I phoned my 18 year old brother and together with my landlady鈥檚 niece we planned our route. On the Saturday morning Mrs Mac packed a picnic with bottled water and a kettle for tea. It was a wonderful day 鈥� very sunny and clear, the sky was so high it was hardly any colour at all, just a pale silvery blue. We set off on bikes and went along dusty country lanes for about 20 minutes until we heard an air raid siren from the coast, Canterbury and Ashford so we knew something was coming in but we were not sure what. We were not worried as up until then there had only been odd planes coming over. There had been no big raids. We heard a distant rumble which was far off and very faint, we looked up into the sky and we could see planes but they were so high we could only see little pin points of light when the sun caught them we weren鈥檛 worried at first but we were anxious because of the numbers. Suddenly there was a roar of aircraft engines and our planes flew in to intercept them, which was followed by a rattle of machine gun fire. We threw down our bicycles and jumped into a ditch, which was at right angles to the road, headless of the brambles and stinging nettles. In front of the ditch was a pile of telegraph poles about 3 foot high which offered some protection. The sky was full of the roar of planes engines and screams as they swooped down and manoeuvered, the rat-a-tat-tat of the machine guns and the clatter of the shell cases hitting the trees and ground. Then there was a terrific whoosh and a plane nose dived into the field we were in and exploded into a cloud of black smoke. Shortly after another plane came down in the field but this time in pieces like sheets of cardboard floating down. Gradually the noise subsided all was quiet when we heard the sound of footsteps approaching. The thought went through my mind and probably through the others too 鈥� 鈥榠s it a German approaching, had he got a gun? Would we be shot or perhaps taken hostage?鈥� the footsteps stopped and after a few moments I peered over the top of the telegraph poles, standing on the road was an old man of about 80 with an Old Father Time Scythe on his shoulder. 鈥淭hat was some battle鈥� I said 鈥淎h鈥� he said 鈥淚 thought you were some of those bloody Germans I was gonna give the buggers what for鈥�. We climbed out of the ditch and gathered up our scattered sandwiches, water and bent kettle and picked up our bikes down towards the coast we could see a number of the old mushroom parachutes being carried south on the wind. We got on our bikes and rode home in silence.

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