大象传媒

Sights and Sounds.
One morning Dad came in to say a Dornier, nicknamed - a Flying Pencil, had flown low over Milton Street. He watched its progress as it silhouetted against the starlight. Somewhere over Awsworth and Cossall the Ack Ack batteries opened up and hit the front of the plane which tilted upwards like a boat hitting a wave. It dived over the horizon. Grandad Pounder asked the sergeant of the Battery on Shipley Common why he had not opened fire on it and was told, "My gun elevations were so low when we sighted it I would have taken most of the roofs in Cotmanhay off so we left it."
Although in Physics, in particular Acoustics, the human voice is not supposed to carry far, there is a contradiction in that the sergeant on Shipley Common could be heard clearly in our back yard - and many others no doubt. He would shout, "Get your bearings." There followed a wait during which fear and expectation built up beyond description. "FIRE!!!". At that moment I was grabbed and hoisted into the house, much to my tiny anger because I wanted to watch. Sometimes shrapnel from the shells rattled on the roof cracking slates and - as I discovered only a few years ago when they were removed- taking chunks out of the chimney pots.
... One Sunday in complete darkness we reached the allotments opposite Kensington School, next to the vicarage, where Welcome Hall now stands. Suddenly the search lights at Stanton Ironworks came on. They were like white pencils of light flicking here and there.
Aeroplanes, like cars, were few and far between so when you heard the noise of a `plane you rushed out to see. Sometimes it was an old bi-plane or a Tiger Moth or a fighter doing Victory rolls and leaving a vapour trail with what appeared to be knots in it. The strange thing is that I have no memory of the thousand bomber raids when the sky was full of planes.
Dad told me that while on patrol around Cotmanhay during the blackout he saw `shooting stars` and the Northern Lights and a kind of white rainbow called a Moonbow.
I was told the Junkers had an engine sound like You You You, which did nothing to help Mam`s nerves. I cannot recall hearing one.

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