大象传媒

The date was 3rd Sept 1939. I was sitting in the kitchen of my home with my parents and sister listening to the speech by Neville Chamberlain on the wireless. The words "This country is at war with Germany" left us in stunned silence. To me it meant very little but my father knew what it meant, having served in the First World War. However, it was to be a rather different war to the last one. On the Sunday morning following the 3rd September, we were awoken by the sound of an aircraft, which was followed by the sound of a whistling bomb which seemed to last for a long time until we heard the explosion. I found afterwards that a very small bomb, possibly 5kg, had fallen in Pembroke Crescent. It had created a small crater in the road and sprayed shrapnel around. Stangely as far as I can remember, this was never reported in the newspapers.

Sunday August 25th 1940.
At about 10pm, a number of German aircraft dropped incendiary bombs as well as machine gunning the town cemtre. Fires started all over Brighton - the most serious at the Brighton Intermediate School in York Place (where I was a pupil). The fire destroyed the roof and the top floor of the school. I thought "Wow, this means no school for me!" This thought was short lived however, as my class was moved to a temporary building in the grounds at the rear of the Brighton Technical College.

Tuesday September 24th 1940.
It was a beautiful sunny morning with a clear blue sky. Our class was having a science lesson with our teacher, Mr W. Palmer. Suddenly, we heard the sounds of a low flying aircraft. The plane was a Junkers 88, I found out later. Our teacher went outside to investigate and immediately rushed back in telling us to get under the desks and grasp our hands behind our necks. What he had seen was a stick of bombs appearing to come straight on top of us. It seemed an eternity while we waited in silence for something to happen. Then came several massive explosions causing the ground to tremble and our building to shake. This was followed by a large piece of masonry crashing through the skylight of our classroom showering glass all over the classroom - fortunately, no-one was hurt. The area of Albion Hill, Cambridge Street and Ashton Street had been devastated, some 30 houses had been destroyed and 15 people killed. Our class was sent home immediately, as one of the bombs had not exploded and was buried a few yards from our class room. We were very lucky the bomb had not exploded otherwise we could all have been killed. On reflection, it was possible that the bomb aimer was aiming for the Brighton Technical College. Our class was later moved to the Preston Road School, where we continued our studies.

I cannot remember the precise date, but it was shortly after we had moved to Preston Road School that a further encounter with the Luftwaffe occurred. I was going home to lunch with my friend Gordon Beedie, when we suddenly heard a terrific roar of approaching aircraft. Bullets were hitting the road beside us, so we dived beind the nearest tree. As we did, an ME 110 came flying over about 50ft up, followed by a Spitfire. The rear gunner in the ME 110 could be clearly seen and was firing at the Spitfire until the Spitfire gave him a burst of his eight guns, which I guessed silenced him for we later heard that the ME 110 had been shot down between Lancing and Worthing. On return to school after lunch, we found that one of our class had a bullet hole through the lapel of his tunic - the bullet having smashed into the sweet shop at the bottom of the Drive. I guess we were very lucky again that day.

Until we went back to the Technical College, we had to do fire watching in the school with a teacher, but we had no incidents. During the next few months, I was asked by Mr Palmer if I could produce some aircraft identification silhouettes for the Royal Observer Corps of which he was a member. I produced about 30 silhouettes, which were hopefully put to good use for the War effort.

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