大象传媒

This is a story told to Chris by his late father, Chris is telling the story as he remembers it.

Dad was medically excused from military service and he worked on the land in Coggeshall, Essex but he was able to join the Home Guard in the later years of the war. On one occasion they were called to Colchester Barracks where they were transferred to an unknown destination, being told not to look out of the back of the truck. It seemed to Dad as if they were travelling for ever, and towards the end of the journey he did peep out of the vehicle and it appeared to him that the sun was setting in the east because of a large orange glow on the horizon. When they eventually reached their destination, which he later found out was Shingle Street, he said that the sea looked as if it was alight and he assumed that a tanker had gone down and the fuel was blazing. When they got to the edge of the shore it was awash with burnt bodies which Dad said were wearing full German uniforms. They had to stay at Shingle Street, guarding these bodies, until relieved by the regular army. Before they got into the trucks to return home, Dad said they were told never to tell anyone what they had done or seen.

Dad didn't tell me this story until he was about 60yrs old - some forty years afterwards - and he was prompted by a television programme where someone from Shingle Street was talking about these events.
I recently visited Parham Airfield where there is a museum for the Secret Army, and during a conversation with the curator about Dad's story, which the curator was familiar with, he said that the Dutch Resistance had corroborated this story by saying that their hospitals had filled up with burnt German military personnel at the time of the Shingle Street episode.
Apparently the story has been denied by MOD, and Dad always thought that it was an invasion attempt or a practice by the German Military, but we'll probably never know exactly what did happen at Shingle Street.

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