大象传媒

Bombs in rural Rutland

Empingham is a pretty, sleepy village in the heart of Rutland. At the beginning of the war there were 720 inhabitants. I know, because I had listed them under the supervision of the village school headmaster, Mr. W. Forsyth. For the most part the wartime years were marked by austerity, shared produce to relieve rationing, soldiers on manoeuvres, the blackout, and a great spirit of cooperation and friendliness. It went without saying the belief in ultimate victory, but from time to time the Luftwaffe left reminders by way of bombs that even Empingham was a wartime target. The Luftwaffe was never specific regarding the attacks, whether they were by accident or by design! The bombs left superficial damage only, no casualties or damage to buildings. Pointless pinpricks in the scheme of warfare. Little or no notice of these attacks was taken by the villagers by and large, but to me, aged 12 and 13 at the time, they were exciting events that needed my urgent investigation and which provided souvenirs to be saved and swapped. The authorities always did their best to remove the debris, but they unwittingly left evidence. With one notable exception, I never left a bombsite empty handed. The debris had a significant value in schoolboy trading, and I was an ardent trader.

The most spectacular event occurred on Maundy Thursday of 1941. In the early hours my father woke my two brothers and me to come and look towards the north of the village. The village was bathed in an intense light with a light reddish cast. The appearance of the White Horse Inn was little different to that during daylight. Main Street was deserted; there was no sound, just a gentle breath of wind. My father was remarkably calm as he explained that a German air raid was in progress and that he expected that soon the Germans would be dropping explosive bombs and the best place to take shelter was under the dining table which was a substantial one. The whole family took blankets and took cover under the table but after a matter of minutes the light began to lose its intensity with no explosions, and no sound of aircraft. So within forty minutes we were all back in bed. I can imagine that many villagers were blissfully unaware of this attack. Thursday was a school day as usual and the incendiary bomb attack was the only topic of conversation and rumour concerning the raid was rife. The number of bombs soon escalated to 20,000. There clearly had been a very large number. There was a single element of the truth as far as I could tell. Mr Denny Griffin, the village baker was looking out of his bedroom at the Bakehouse on Church Street at the spectacle when he spotted an incendiary bomb on fire in the stackyard of Butler鈥檚 farm. Fearing that the stacks might take fire he put on clothes, ran the 60 yards to the stackyard and extinguished the fire with a fire bucket of sand. Even in Empingham, villagers had acted on government advice to have sand buckets and Stirrup pumps and buckets of water handy.

Good Friday was a school holiday and my first opportunity to go to fields up Exton road into which the majority of the bombs had fallen. As far as I could see the majority of the bombs had fallen into Weed鈥檚 farm fields and into the two spinneys, Warren on the side of Exton road and Lee some 60 yards to the east. A smaller number had fallen in Peasgood鈥檚 farm fields to the west of Exton Road. There were small mounds of pure white residue within yards of each other. It was apparent that the number of bombs was in the hundreds and not the thousands of rumour. The authorities had done some clearing up because for the majority of mounds the tail fin of the bomb which was made of steel was missing, but I searched around and found several which I saved as souvenirs. Some, not badly burnt were of an olive green colour and looked well made, being about 2 inches in diameter and about 41/2 inches long, having three fins. After the excitement of finding the tailfins I began to wonder if anything was left in the ground and for this I needed a tool so I went home with my stock of fins to get a trowel. I returned and started to dig. I found a strong spring and sundry pieces of steel. Nothing really creditworthy, so on to the next one, but with the same result. And so on, but then I was rewarded with the nose assembly of the incendiary, complete with German markings. Further examination showed that the nose assembly screwed into the body of the bomb, and I was able to unscrew the nose from the remains of the body of the bomb. Now I could examine the spring and detonator mechanism. Simple, but well made. This was really exciting, the more so as it was not possible, or so it seemed, to identify those mounds that would give rise to such treasure. I recovered a few before hunger and exhaustion overcame the urge for more. I subsequently found that the incendiary bombs were type B1E and weighed about 2录 lbs (1 Kg). The length was about 13 陆 鈥�, the diameter being 2鈥�. The tailfin was about 4 陆鈥� long and 2鈥� diameter and was of 3 fin, drum shrouded steel construction.
A modest bomb load of 500 pounds would then equate to more than 200 incendiary bombs. .Certainly there were at least this number of remains seen by me. There were many other numbers and designations engraved in the silver coloured magnesium metal. It seemed to me a great deal of trouble to go to by the German manufacturer. One can imagine, in hindsight, slave labour being forced to produce these bombs and it may be that some defect was deliberately introduced during manufacture to ensure that the primer did not ignite the magnesium of the complete bombs that I found later.

The pattern of remains followed a natural law, in that there were most at the centre, fewer as the distance from the centre increased. Since the one in the village had fallen half a mile from the centre it seemed to me that one had to search over a large area to be sure that all had been found. I was rewarded some days later when I was searching the ploughed field to the west of Clipsham ford on Loves Lane. I came across a tailfin with silver body attached sticking out of the soil. No white residue was present so the magnesium had not burned. It was easy to recover the bomb from the soft soil and this revealed that some burning had taken place but not of the magnesium. I concluded that the bomb was now harmless as the detonator had fired the primer. Then a second reward because barely thirty yards away I found a second bomb in an identical state, the only difference being in the angle that the bomb was in, this second one more nearly horizontal than the first. Urgent searching yielded no more remains, burnt or not. So I went down to the river to wash the two bombs and pristine they became. No scoring or dents, just near perfection. What a prize, my 鈥榮poils of war鈥�. I just could not wait to get the bomb to pieces, but try as I might the screwed joint was firmly made and I was unable to loosen it. It could wait until I got home where there was a good stock of suitable tools.. So, jubilantly I turned for home. I had turned into Main Street from Loves Lane, just beyond the police station when I was met by Mr Sidney Corby who demanded 鈥渨hat have you got there, boy鈥�. I explained how I had found them and washed them but he insisted that I could not have them. I rebutted all of his arguments to my satisfaction, but he was adamant that they belonged to the government and that he was going to take them whether I liked it or not and if I did not give them to him he would get me into real trouble. So reluctantly I relinguished my treasure.

The excitement was not yet over because I had pieces of magnesium that were in its original form and therefore capable of being burnt., producing a vivid light. I tried to light a small piece without success, so a source of more intense heat was required. The Smithy was close to where I lived and I was very friendly with the village blacksmith. The blacksmith was approached and after lengthy negotiation and assurance that no explosion would ensue, he was persuaded to put a small piece in his fire. This produced the expected display. So how about a bigger piece ? This produced an even more spectacular display, but now the white residue was also greater and the blacksmith claimed that this spoiled his fire and refused point blank to continue with the experiments. The Smithy remains today converted into a residence. Inevitably, Butler鈥檚 farm stackyard now accommodates houses rather than stacks.

The Empingham centre map shows Butler's Farm stackyard, giving some clue to the present residents of Empingham how close we came to a major incident. The second, district map gives a better impression of the scale of the attack. The epicentre is defined as the area of greatest density of bombs. In this area the bomb remains were separated by two to five yards. Note the distance from this site to the site in Butler鈥檚 stackyard and the somewhat greater distance to the field alongside Clipsham Ford. It is very difficult to explain this very large spread given that German bombers of the time had a service ceiling of some 20,000 feet and a groundspeed of about 200 mph. As a fire raising device the incendiary bomb failed at Empingham. Even those that fell in the spinneys in a dry spring season barely left more than the hint of a scorch mark on the greenery. The dead leaves on the ground had not burned significantly.

Another experience that has left a lasting impression on me concerned my searching one of Corby鈥檚 farm fields next to Lings spinney to the south of the Stamford road. I was looking for field mushrooms which were a popular food and a source of revenue for me. I got 2s/6d per pound for them and often picked more than one pound. The field was gently rising and featureless but I became aware of a disturbance, which as I approached, appeared circular in shape and a few inches high. Now, really curious, I went for a close look to find a circular, perfectly formed hole some 15 inches in diameter surrounded by an annulus of soil some 3 or 4 inches high. That鈥檚 all. Then it dawned on me that I had found a German unexploded high explosive bomb. I did not meddle with it, but left on tip toe ! I returned to the village full of enthusiasm for my find, but when I told Mr Sidney Corby he 鈥榢nocked the wind out of my sails鈥� when he told me he 鈥渒new all about it鈥�. I hope that I can be forgiven for doubting his word at the time. I had hoped for more after leaving a bombsite empty handed.

There was quite a spectacular unexploded bomb that fell near Half Moon spinney to the west of the road from Bull Bridge to Edith Weston. It fell on the brow of the hill some ten yards from the edge of the spinney. The first that the villagers knew of this was the sound of the explosion produced as the bomb disposal squad destroyed the bomb. A day or two later I was free to examine the site. It was strewn with the remains of the timber that had been used to shore up the dig. I also found the remains of the wire that had been used to electrically detonate the bomb. I also found some of the largest pieces of shrapnel that I had ever seen. Jagged and razor sharp and remarkably bright and clean. Good souvenirs, but nevertheless a wasted German effort. Sadly, Half Moon spinney was destroyed in the making of Rutland Water, thus denying future archaeologists from attempting to recover the remains.

Quite early in the bombing offensive there was an incident that involved a string of three bombs all of which exploded. The site was to the north of the Empingham to Whitwell road in the field next to the road leading to High Moor on the Whitwell side of this road. Debris littered the Empingham road but that was all. The craters of two of the bombs were well filled in by those who had cleared up the site, but for some reason the third crater was partially filled and soon became water logged and a small pond developed.

Please read Chapter 2 for a continuation of this story

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