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At the start of the war in 1939 I was evacuated from London with one of the first groups of children. We all lined up and got on the train clutching our gas masks, and I ended up on a farm in Fawkham, near Dartford.

One night in 1940 I was asleep upstairs in the farmhouse when I was woken by the sound of explosions nearby. One bomb fell across the road from us, and another into the garden, blowing out all the windows including mine. I remember I got up to go and have a look and pulled back the curtain, cutting my hand on all the broken glass still stuck in the frame. I also heard the sound of a third bomb hitting the ground nearby but didn’t think anything more of it. We all went back to sleep, and the next day we went out and looked at all the large craters, including the third. Again we didn’t think anything more of it and went to bed again that night. Later, at around the same time as the previous night, there was suddenly another loud bang close by. The next day we had a look about, there was no fourth crater, but the third one we’d looked at the day before was even bigger! What we hadn’t realised was that the third bomb had never actually gone off until twenty four hours later on that second night.

I was around twelve years old at the time, and being that young I never really realised how close we’d all come those nights, it never really registered or sunk in. We all just got on as normal as best we could, just like everyone else back then. I continued to help out on the farm, and didn’t think anything more of the whole incident. Now I know we were very lucky, and it was a good job none of us decided to try and get a closer look at that third crater!

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by James Barton and has been added to the website on behalf of Albert Banning with his/her permission and they fully understand the site’s terms and conditions.

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