大象传媒

If in our Surrey hills village before the WAR we could enjoy really dark nights 'choc full' of stars, then during some black-out nights the sight was truly phenominal. One could in fact see so many stars - from horizon to horizons - tht they combined to actually shed light like dim moonlight itself.
The main belt seen was of course our Milky Way galaxy, and since nowadays it's regarded as comprised of many more than fifty million stars, then I believe it implicitly. I beg your pardon, I should have written 100 billion stars!!

If the moon was in full bloom under these extremes of clear visibility then many of the smaller more distant stars became invisible. Either way, it was all utterly entrancing. But it's true to say - on those especially clear nights without moonshine, stars could be seen in three dimentional proportions.
My ten year old vision was exceptionally keen and sharp, thus I was seeing stars at varying distances towards the infinity. One winter evening my observations were staggering, for the mulitude of glittering stars appeared like scattered silver sands cast prolifically around the heavens as if to net and snare the supernatural.

By the autumn of 1938, searchlights training up for war meant yet another spectacle to please the eye. As many as six or eight shafts of intense light beamed from different locations would combine to form pin-point cones as they tried to locate target aircraft flown from Croydon Airport. Where the 'wigwam' of angled lights met and crossed, there might you see the silver dragon plane courting with the tempting stars.

With the WAR not producing any enemy aircraft over Surrey till August 1940, then we had only the blackout to confound us. But once August arrived and bringing with it the Battle of Britain, our sky by day and night became the all action battlefield of aeroplanes.
Early in the month the odd German bomber or two flew up from the south coast soon after dark, and after overflying Bletchingley and our Chaldon, pressed on northwestwards of London suburbs as they made for the midlands. They were nuisance raiders mainly - sent to jangle people's nerves and keep millions awake and sleepless. Pest planes; but a ploy of war. As the Battle progressed though, so did the number of 'pest' planes. These Jerry bombers were nearly always accompanied by cones of the mentioned searchlights as they tracked the droning aircraft coming up from Sussex. So now our night sky took on fresh looks of interest and beauty, and we children watched the fun with awe!

By the end of the month, we were into very much more noise as the Battle momentum grew. Now we were seeing and hearing anti-aircraft gun-fire and the flash of bursting shells; ocassionally the whistles of night-falling bombs too.

Into September the escalating WAR doubled and re-doubled, and our night sky was a fireworks display worth watching. Now we were also introduced to strings of slowly falling magnesium flares - a brightness to blot out both moon and stars, and searchlights. Add to all this the London ring of barking anti-aircraft guns and their thousands of shells, the flash of bombs, hundreds of big aero engines drumming in our ears, and then the furnace red glow of London's burning docks, the 'sights' in OUR sky was a spectacle like Dante's ample thoughts.

If we got a quiet night during this period it was due to poor weather in France; it mattered not here for the bombers could drop bombs though clouds, they used radio beams to find release points. Clever stuff. October and November saw the WAR take more radical night tactical bombing - the 'blitz' - as it was called. Now the sights in the darkness knew no bounds. What the stars made of it all I can't imagine. But nobody can bomb them out, nor touch them with a searchlight. Men can walk upon the moon; touch it, and also bring some down to earth, but stars of bauty are forever beyond the hands of war and wings of death.

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