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Doodle Bug Over St. Paul`s

by Len Beard

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Contributed by听: Len Beard
People in story:听: Len Beard
Location of story:听: Ludgate Circus, London, E.C.4
Background to story:听: Civilian
Article ID:听: A3523448
Contributed on:听: 14 January 2005

In 1941 I was a 15-year-old messenger on The Times newspaper working evenings collecting photos and copy from news agencies, i.e, Reuters, Press Assn., The Manchester Guardian, Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, and even Churchill`s underground lair off Whitehall.
On this occasion I was at Ludgate Circus on my last job picking up some photos, I heard this doodlebug which I could see flying behind St. Paul's - the flames from its jet were easily seen - when it cut out. I dived into the gutter and saw the explosion also aware of a large, curved, window of a tobacconist's few feet away that vibrating like mad. Another night I was going home around 10p.m. and was blown off my bike in Blackfriars Road near St. George's Circus. My tyres were cut to ribbons and I rode on the rims until I got to my Gran's in Browning Street, Walworth.

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Message 1 - Doodle Bug over St. Paul's

Posted on: 14 January 2005 by Audrey Lewis - WW2 Site Helper

Dear LenBeard,
So pleased you remembered the incident in London when you were a boy. It must have been a frightening experience.
In 1951 I went to work in City Road just a few blocks away from St. Paul's. I could see the Cathedral from my ninth floor window and lived in a building that was shot to pieces. All around me were the remains of wartime bombings. It was terrible, as I remember. You must have seen many such sights too?
Thank you for letting me read your story. Perhaps you may have more to tell?
Kind regards,
Audrey Lewis

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Message 2 - Doodle Bug over St. Paul's & other stories

Posted on: 16 January 2005 by Len Beard

I have some other aspects of the war years: evacuee in Market Harborough; Midhurst & Trotton in Sussex; and Northampton. Also in the Army in Greece while a war between the royalists & communists was going on. My unit was shot at in the night in the mountains above Thessalonika. We never found out who did it. Another time in a tented training camp a kilometre or so from a mountain village called Hortiartis I was on guard between a few coils of barbed wire and the guard tent a few metres away, and it all happened. A lot of small arms fire and grenade explosions; plus flames high in the sky. The stuff you see in modern Rambo & James Bond films. At dawn the guerrillas went past my guard post, a gap in coils of barbed wire. Some were in rags, others in skins. Bloody wrappings on some, others on makeshift stretchers. I gave a quiet call to the sleepers in the guard tent - no one moved. Giving the guerrillas a slow look I was ignored. I just stood there and hardly dare move until they were out of sight. At breakfast nobody admitted seeing or hearing anything.
Have been on holiday there in recent years, hired a car and identified the exact spots my Army boots marched over. The village is now a mountain winter/summer resort

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