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John Ferris who is now 75 lived at Broomwood Road St Pauls Cray during the war and saw many incidents of the air warfare and was on the wrong end of several bombing raids, particularly in 1940 and 1941.

The ‘ack ack’ guns nearby blew off the tail of a Dornier bomber and it landed in the field behind the Bull Pub. A French fighter Morange (Spelling?) which had been brought over to the UK following the fall of France was shot down during a dog fight and the pilot parachuted down in a field near the St Pauls Cray farmhouse.

Later several land mines were parachuted into the area. John found part of the parachute of one of them on his front doorstep on one occasion. A mine which came down by the Gas Works, caused a flood of water down Sevenoaks Way, which looked like a river. Another landed close to a shelter killing all the occupants.

In 1944 a flying bomb blew the top of John’s married sister’s bungalow, and they came back to live with the family.

Later German prisoners some from the Russian front, were engaged in laying concrete foundations for the prefab bungalows which were provided to speed up re-housing of those who had lost their homes. Something of a coincidence for this story taker, whose first house in the 1950s, round the corner from John’s house, backed on to the prefab housing site, which itself backed onto Corke’s Meadow, scene later of a another dramatic event, but that is another story!

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