大象传媒

This story was submitted to the peoples war site by Tristan Warr (the volunteer) of age concern Ceredigion on behalf of (the author) and has been added to the site with his/her permission. The author fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

The parachutist.

I was born in 1935 and during WW2 I lived with my parents and younger brother in the village of Burpham, near Guildford, Surrey. By the time I started school after easter 1940 we were used to air raids and seeing enemy planes, tangling with our Hurricans and spitfires in the skies overhead. School dinners were not yet available at this time, so as I lived reasonably close to school I went home for my lunch.

On the day in question I had my lunch at home as usually walked back to school afterwards. It was a nice sunny day, and as I walked through the village I noticed that there were no other children walked back to school, no one in the street, no one in their gardens, no one in the fields. This was unusual but it didn鈥檛 bother me. As I walked along the footpath past the churchyard, under the grove of the biggest elm trees circling the churchyard I began to get a little nervours as I didn鈥檛 like walking past those forbidding looking gravestones on my own.

As I walked along the path I heard a voice shout 鈥渉oi鈥�, and on looking around could see no one and immediately cast a wary eye over to the gravestone. But the voice shouted 鈥渉oi鈥� again, I walked quicker, and on the hearing the shout again I started to run for the school yard which was next to the church around the bend in the lane. The voice was still calling and I kept running until I entered through the iron gates into the schoolyard where I was safe. In the safety of the schoolyard I turned around to see if I could see anyone. To my surprise I saw someone hanging in one of the elm trees on the end of a parachute. He had dark coloured clothes, and was waving to me the schoolyard was deserted so I ran as fast as I could into the school building which I also found deserted. I now realized that there must be an air-raid in progress so I made my way around the school bulding and down the steps into the air-raid shelter, where I found all the other children the teachers. I sat down amongst them glad to have company, but was to afraid to tell the teachers about the man hanging in the tree.

He must have called me some strange names when no help came for him but by the time school finished for the day the parachutist had gone from the tree. Someone else must have found him but in never heard anymore about this incident, through the following years I often wondered who he was, one of ours, or one of theirs, did he still remember the little boy who didn鈥檛 alert the authorities of his plight.

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