大象传媒

This story has been added to The People鈥檚 War Website by CSV Volunteer Olivia Davey on behalf of the author Miss M.E. Blackhurst who understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

As a child I was brought up on a farm in Redbourn in Hertfordshire. A few miles from the farm was the main arterial road of Watling Street and a few miles on the other side was Brocks Firework Factory which was now making munitions. From the farmyard on many nights we could see a dull red glow on the horizon lighting up the sky and this was London burning from the blitz. I can remember one dark evening when there was an air raid my elder brother took me outside to show me the searchlights and there clearly visible was an aircraft caught in its beam. Another recollection is of a night in the late summer, harvest time. In the front of the Farmhouse were two fields of wheat and on this particular night German aircraft were dropping flares and incendiaries. An ARP warden lived very near to one of the fields and was watching what was going on. He spotted an incendiary landing on the edge of the field and quickly went to investigate. With courage and great presence of mind he prevented the incendiary from setting fire to the crop, otherwise two fields of wheat would have been destroyed at a time when the country needed all the food it could produce.

One night I woke up and I could hear the distinctive throb of a single German aircraft. It seemed to be flying round in circles and suddenly there was an almighty explosion. The old farmhouse which was made of brick shuddered alarmingly, but there was no structural damage and no windows broken. The next morning, a Saturday, everything seemed normal and the routine of the farm carried on as usual. On Monday morning the ploughman arrived for work and my father told him which field he wanted to be ploughed. A little later the ploughman came back looking very worried. 鈥淏oss鈥� he said, 鈥淚 can鈥檛 plough that there field, there鈥檚 a darned great hole in it鈥�. Father stopped what he was doing and together they went to the field where, sure enough, there was an enormous crater. On seeing the size of the crater father realized that this was where the landmine had fallen on the previous Friday night. He hurried back to the house and telephoned the Senior ARP officer. The response he got on reporting the location of the crater was one of extreme annoyance. 鈥淲hy the blazes didn鈥檛 you report this before, we鈥檝e been searching for the place where that landmine fell all weekend!鈥�

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