大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Milly Hartley from Community Service Volunteers, Brighton, on behalf of Mrs Jane Common, nee Fielding, and has been added to the site with her permission. Mrs J Common fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

My father, John Alfred Loder Fielding, commonly known as Loder, was originally in the Royal West Kent Army. However he was invalided out because he couldn鈥檛 march correctly due to his flat feet! So he joined the Home Guard instead.

Loder wore his great coat, over his clothes, even when he was working for the haulage business- always on guard! It was a very heavy coat and long, right down to his shins. It would get really wet and soak up all the rain, and smelt like wet sheep!

He spent most of his time as a Haulage Contractor working with his father, delivering coke from the local train station to Hever Castle, to fire the basement boilers.

I remember what it was like in the basements as my father took me down there. I was small enough for him to carry me up and down the spiral iron staircase. I can still smell and taste the dusty old coke. It was dark and hot from the boilers with just a pin prick of light coming from the man hole at the top of the stairs. I used to come out of the basements covered from head to toe in black dust.

One day there was a phone call from the station master to say three wagons of coke had arrived for collection. My father went to Hever station to collect the delivery when he realised he was under attack. He looked up to see a German Fighter plane overhead and dived into a wagon of coke, desperately burying himself under the deep piles of coke. The plane started firing bullets at the wagons. When the shooting subsided he emerged from the coke, covered in black coal dust.

The wagon was absolutely riddled with bullet holes. He realised they were just inches below where he had been hiding! It was dreadful and a real shake up but he managed to escape the bullets and survived by being covered in coke!

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