大象传媒

The day before war broke out I was evacuated from East London to Maidstone, Kent to stay with an elderly couple, Mr and Mrs Penny. At first everything was quiet, but then in 1940 the bombing began and life, at least to us seven-year-olds became a wonderful adventure. We witnessed the most amazing dog-fights, with Spitfires and Messerschmitts weaving about overhead. We would rush to the classroom windows to watch, and the teacher would shout vainly at us to come and sit down. At playtime we would zoom around the playground with our arms stretched out making airplane and machine-gun noises. But our favourite hobby was collecting coloured cigarette cards with pictures of all the different makes of aircraft. Whenever a plane flew over, we would look up and, if it could not be identified, check our cigarette cards. Then, the next day, we would boast in the school playground that we had seen a Heinkel 111. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 nothing,鈥� someone would say, 鈥淚 saw a two-engined Messerschmitt.鈥�
鈥淵a,鈥� we would jeer,鈥� They only have one engine.鈥�
鈥淲ell, it must have been a Junkers. Did you see that Fokker Wolf? It wasn鈥檛 half low.鈥�

We knew it all. Why the British government wasted thousands of pounds at that time training up the Royal Observer Corps when there were several million small boys, up and down the country, who were not only expert but willing to work for free, I do not know. But I mention this because one day I returned home from school during an air-raid. This did not worry me鈥擨 wasn鈥檛 scared of Jerry. There had almost certainly been a raid on Biggin Hill, the main fighter defence station for London. German planes were coming over in ones and twos trying to get back to France. I was living at the time in a Victorian terraced house in Milton Street which did not have a garden, only a backyard with an old kitchen table in it. On reaching the back door I noticed a twin-engined bomber coming towards me from the west, low on the horizon. One of its engines was on fire.

This was exciting. I climbed onto the table to get a better look. A small dot dropped from the plane and a tiny parachute opened. The crew were abandoning the aircraft! This was really exciting. I was up on my toes.

Then, suddenly, I realised the danger I was in. This plane was on fire, out of control, heading straight for me鈥� and was going to crash just where I was standing. I was terrified, so frightened that I was literally scared stiff. I lost the use of my limbs and could only stand there and watch the plane coming toward me. Mrs Penny must have looked out of the kitchen window and seen what was happening, because she came rushing out, scooped me up off the table and carried me down into the cellar, which had been turned into an air-raid shelter. The old widow, who lived next door, came running to join us. She was in hysterics, screaming 鈥淐hrist have mercy on us.鈥� This was perhaps even more frightening than the crashing plane, for nothing distresses a young child more than seeing adults crying.

I remember crawling under a bench and covering my ears with my hands to try and block out the sound of that airplane. It seemed to takes ages to get to us. The sound became so loud that I thought there was no point in screaming because nobody would hear me.

Then, suddenly, there was total silence. Nothing more happened. We sat around for about half-an-hour. The all-clear wailed and we came up the stairs. Everything in the house was perfectly normal. I opened the back door expecting to see a wrecked Heinkel in the backyard. There was nothing there except a broken chimney pot lying just outside the back door. Of the plane there was no sign.

It was not till a week later that we found out what had happened. The plane must have just clipped the roof and crashed into the River Medway, which was one street away. For several days nobody realised there was the wreckage of a plane in the river.

Shortly afterwards I was recalled to London鈥攋ust in time for the Blitz. I have only been back to Maidstone once since then, sometime in the 1990s. I decided to look up my old billet. Milton Street was easy to find and looked much as I remembered it, except that there were lines of parked cars down both sides of the road, but the house seemed to be missing. Someone had built a garage there. I cannot think of any good reason why anyone would buy a house just to pull it down to make space for a parked car, so I assume it must have been bombed, probably during the Blitz. Were Mr and Mrs Penny killed? I shall never know鈥�

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.