大象传媒

About 11.35 am on 31st December 1940 whilst trying to ice skate and play around on a frozen pond near Upson's Farm, Maldon Road, The Green, Hatfield Peverel, we were machine gunned from the front turret of a German twin-engined bomber (could have been a Dornier?). This plane we later discovered had bombed the Crittall Factory at Witham and was returning to Europe.

As a result of the machine gun fire, and the sight of seeing clods of earth and the plopping sound of bullets hitting the mud, we took off across the field at a high rate of knots heading for the back gardens of the council houses on The Green opposite the Cross Keys Public House. On climbing over the wooden spiked fencing, one of the spikes went up the back of my long brown overcoat, and as a result of my struggling to get free I split the coat right down the seam and managed to escape along with my friends.

We then disappeared into a garden shed, which I recall was at the bottom of Herbie Spooner's dad's garden. We later discovered bullet holes in the shed as it was made of corrugated tin, which in our blind panic we did not hear.

On returning home and my mother seeing the new brown overcoat (which had cost a lot of clothing coupons) split right down the back, she was not a very happy woman. When I told her the reason for it she never believed me right up until her dying day.

All of us lads were only 6 years old when we were machine gunned by a German bomber.

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