大象传媒

This story has been written onto the 大象传媒 People's War site by CSV Storygather Alison Lear on behalf of A.W Beech. The story has been added to the site with his permission. And A.W Beech fully understands the terms and conditions of the site.

I left Rockbeare school in 1941. You had to do work of national importance so I went to the local nursery.

In 1942 I was late for work, went out to get on my bicycle to go to work and I saw this German plane. It was shooting at a train on one of these early morning raids. It lined itself up with Rockbeare straight, on the A30, too low for bombing really. It let the bombs go and one exploded right outside the nursery. It was dead on 8 o'clock. One exploded opposite the nursery, in a tree. The bombs just bounced along until they hit something.

The aircraft carried on down the straight, shooting at anything that was moving. I was waiting to go to work as the plane came over shooting and my mate was coming the opposite way on his bicycle and we had to shoot across the road into the ditch. You could hear the cannon shells bursting in the road.

The aircraft turned towards the airport which wasn't far away. It was gradually losing height and it crashed killing all the crew near the Polish billets, where the new A30 is now. It was a camp with both Poles and Czechs. Exeter airport had Spitfires, Hurricanes and Bullfighters.

When I eventually got to the nursery there was a girl badly injured. She later died. There was one chap clocking on who was hit with a cannon shell and he died too.

We were sent home that day instantly and did not go back for a fortnight.

I changed my job and worked for an agricultural engineer in Broadclyst. We went down to Starcross to service a tractor, and a B17 Flying Fortress made a forced landing on the football pich at Langdon farm. The Americans towed it back as far as they could, built a runway and stripped the Flying fortess down.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.