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This story was submitted to the People’s War by a volunteer from CVS on behalf of John Murphy and as been added to the site with his permission. John Murphy fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

It was 1942, I was ten years old and I lived in Stock-On-Trent. Every day when I was going and coming back from school, I used to look at the sky and watch out and listen out for the German planes because I knew what they looked like from the squared wings and I knew their sound. I also used to watch where they were going, because they used to come from Scotland, over Staffordshire and then on to London. I used to watch that all day. If I saw them I would call the police.

I had a pair of binoculars which my brother gave me because he told me to always be ready, if I saw anything I had to aid. I was the only child in the school to have them, although they were old-fashioned. My brother was a good soldier and I wanted to be as good as he was. I always did what he told me. He passed away when he was 80, but he never had the chance to tell his story. As a soldier he spoke seven languages fluently, one of these was German, so they sent him to Germany and he passed as sergeant, so he managed to get plans to see what it was going on; once he stood aside of Hitler and later on he told me that he looked like a little midget!

I wanted to be a hero like my brother, so every day I used to watch out for German planes. On one particular day, I was coming back from school on a country road along the fields, walking towards Stanfield, when I saw a German plane flying very high in the sky. I got very excited and I start running towards the nearest place where there was a phone, at the end of the road. I called the police and I told them I saw a spit-fire going towards Stanfield going toward the hospital. They didn’t ask my name, they knew it was me, they recognized me from my young voice and because I was the only child doing this, so they told me: ‘Ok John, we know what to do’. After a while I saw another plane in the sky and I remember how exciting it was to see them flying so closely.

One week later, the head of the police came to our house and asked my mother if he could take me to see the German plane I helped to take down. They knew it was me because they said ‘There is only one person who could do that, because you are just like your brother!’. Then he asked me if he could see the binoculars and when he saw them he started to laugh and said: ‘These are old-fashioned! You can’t spot anything in a good distance with these! How did you do it?!’. I was half death and I had a bad education but I had a very good eye!
My mother accepted to go and see the plane and when I saw it I just couldn’t believe they way it had landed! The plane was lying in the middle a school yard at the top end of Stock-On-Trent, but it hadn’t damaged anything. The nose, the tail and the wings were down. It hadn’t exploded or caught fire; it was half crashed, to me it looked as if one past was dipped into the cement!
They told me: ‘This is the plane that you helped us knock down’. The pilot had not died and they made him a prisoner of war. The captured Germans were kept in a big prison-camp nearby and they made them work in the fields. The people used to go and watch them through the fence to see what they looked like, as we had never seen Germans, the enemies, before. We imagined them to be very tall and blond, by they were just short, most of them dark and they seemed weird!
The head of the police told my mother that he wanted to award me for what I had done, but she said no because I was only ten years old, I couldn’t really read and write and I probably didn’t understand what a reward was. She said I had only done my duty as a good boy. Now, to think about it, I know it was a dangerous thing I was doing, I just wanted to be like my brother, he always used to tell me ‘whatever you, don’t let anyone get the better of you, always be on top, always go forward’. And I did, I always went forward, I always run towards the nearest phone.

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