大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by CSV/大象传媒 Radio Nottingham on behalf of Ron Cooke with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

July 1942, Mapperly Plains. A Lancaster Bomber and her crew that didnt make it home.

We were fortunate I suppose as kids the area we lived in was rural to North Mapperly Plains, with the nearby villages of Lambley, Woodborough and Calverton. The farmers fully stretched in their effort to meet the nations demand for food, in the summer evenings you would find us in the fields doing whatever the season demanded of us, and the farmers were glad of our help. We were happy to pick up a few bob it brought us at the weekend, 3p an hour (1.5p today)we were even given time off school by the authorities when the farmers requested our help. Their full time labour had been depleted by their call up to the services leaving only the minimum to carry on the vital work of production. The Women's Land Army was in operation but a bit spare on the ground in our area. My memories are still vivid of aching backs as we, on our knees singled the mangold crop in never ending rows, or picking potatoes, the beautiful heady smell of of the new mown hay that had been cut by the antiquated method of moving blades pulled along by the ever faithfull horses. Their brasses reflecting the sun in the toil to supply the winter feed for the milking cows and their offspring. Yes it was hard work turning the hay by hayfork to permit the sun to dry the other side that had been hidden by the process. If the weather was kind it was gathered in and stackedin a sheltered corner of the field. A far cry from todays automated methods, I can see us now, our grubby faces from the dust, and the streaks of sweat that cut channels down our mischeivous grins. Our labours were occasionally interrupted when we downed tools to view the skies. As the steady drone of our bombers flew over on their evening mission to raid their designated destination, to us as kids it was a great sight as we cheered and waved them on, today as I now reflect, some innocent kids would be on the deadly load unleashed upon them, but at that time, it was akin to excitement and patriotism. Today, I try to reason why nations found it necessary to inflict these atrocities against their fellow man; However we had our sad moments as the stark realisation of war was brought home to us. On one of these long summer evenings we had finished our toils and our sweat replenished by the ever present bucket of teasupplied by the farmers wife. No sugar but heavily adulterated by the fresh milk from the dairy. Dusk was closing in, the first slither of moon was lending its brightness to the evening sky as we encouraged our old bone shaker bikes as we called them to take us homeward. As we approached the junction of Woodborough Lane and Mapperly Plains being in the elevated position as we were, across the still evening air came the sound of faltering aircraft engines that broke the stillness from a south easterly direction. It flew towards us at the height of possibly 200-300 ft. The starboard engine of the Lancaster Bomber burst into flames and rapidly spread across the wing which then fell away from the aircraft. By this time the craft was heading into her death throes as it went into a slow spiral increasing in speed as it descended to crash, taking with it the brave young crew. We three young teenagers as we were was probably the last human beings the gallant crew saw before they met their end. They had probably thought they could make it back to base somewhere in the locality, and had stayed with their aircraft rather than bail out. By the time they had reached us they were too late as they were too low. We turned our cycles and tried to follow the descent of the craft and her crew to see if we could help. But unfortuneately we were unable to detect the crash site. After that episode although we still cheered and waved them on we also knew that some of those lads would not be returning home.

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