大象传媒

GRANDAD, JIM LAW鈥橲 MEMORIES, 1935 - 1945

On the very day that war was declared, Sunday September 3rd 1939, I was living with my parents and my brother, Kev, at Wingmore, near the Palm Tree Inn. My father had gone to see my granddad who was dying in Folkestone hospital. We were at home with mum and in the middle of the morning the air raid siren went off. We were all very scared Mum insisted that we took our little tent down that we had pitched in the garden or else 鈥淭he Germans will think soldiers are in it and bomb it,鈥� she said. Of course it was a false alarm.

The very first enemy plane to come down in England came down in Bladbean. The young German pilot just flew it across the sea and landed and gave himself up. Many villagers rushed up there to see the Messerschmit, which had taken part in the Spanish civil war. Souvenir hunters had to be watched by the police. It seemed to me to be such a small aeroplane.

I was working on the farm at Ottinge, for the Gammon family, whilst waiting to go into the Navy. I had been to my Granny鈥檚 for lunch at 12.00 noon and at just about 1.00 PM I returned to my tractor with a bucket of water as it was leaking. As I poured the water into the tractor these two planes came right over me. I could see the pilot of one of them looking directly down on me as if he was wondering what I was doing. That, plus the swastika, frightened me so much that I dropped the bucket and lost the water. I don鈥檛 think that at any time during my career in the Navy that I ever shook so much with fright. After that I had to walk all the way back to the farm to get some more water.

My mother and father who had been living in Canterbury because mother worked in the railway booking office and dad was on the building. They decided to return to the Elham Valley to live as an aunt and cousin had been killed by a direct hit on their house at Wincheap. They came back to live at Rats Castle at North Lyminge. Every time 鈥淏ig Bertha鈥� the gun that was kept on the railway lines, was fired the shells went right over mum鈥檚 house and when they came home from work, they would find the roof and ceilings badly damaged. On each occasion the officer in charge would meet them and apologise. They were compensated for the damage several times.

As this corner is the nearest to Germany it was natural for their bombers to come this way, especially when the target was London. The front line aerodromes of Hawkinge and Biggin Hill etc. weren鈥檛 far away. It was from these bases that the Hurricanes and Spitfires went up to engage the enemy. Thus, daily there were dog fights over head. It was common to see the battles, with anti-aircraft shells exploding all around. There were Hurricanes and Spitfires shooting at the German planes. Many fell in the Elham Valley, whilst others dived into the sea. Pilots parachuted down and the German crews were taken prisoner. Occasionally a German bomber would get shot down and early one morning this big black sinister Dornier bomber flew up low up the valley from Folkestone towards Canterbury and sure enough it was shot down in Barham and finally crashed onto the railway.

My last and final recollection of those raids before joining the Navy was of the last biggest raid ever on London on a Saturday afternoon. Again, I was on the tractor at Eastleigh Court, Stelling Minnis and ploughing a huge meadow all on my own. I must have been about 16 years old. At mid afternoon these swarms and swarms of bombers came over flying quite high, wave after wave of them. They were surrounded by buzzing and whining fighters flying alongside and in and out of the bombers to protect them. All were in perfect formation and nothing seemed to challenge them. They seemed to be going over for an age and there were so many of them. I stopped work and took what shelter I could under some trees. Of course they were not after me. When they had finally gone I resumed work on the tractor. Two or three hours later I heard them returning. Goodness me, what a sight, and what a noise. Planes everywhere, high and low, now the formations had gone and it seemed that everyone was doing their own thing to survive. High flying planes, low flying planes, bombers and fighters, both English and German, fighting battles and shooting at each other all the time. Heavy machine noises from the bombers and whining diving fighters all intermingled. Several planes came down, mostly in the Channel. Pilots bailed out and floated down. Apparently, the German aircraft had gone in almost unchallenged and bombed and set light to London鈥檚 dockyards. Some returned that night and bombed London again, this time using the fires as navigational aids. During the daytime raid, which was undoubtedly the biggest raid ever, the British aircraft claimed to have shot down 184 German planes, but as the time went on and the confusion died down the figure was proved to be rather too large. In was certainly the most losses that the Germans had ever had and it started a period when raids gradually decreased. Many feel that at this point, Hitler and his chiefs of staff realised that bombing alone, however heavy, was not going to win the war.

"This story was submitted to the People's War site by BARBARA COLLINS-NEWING from 大象传媒 KENT on behalf of Mrs Vera Law and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions."

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