大象传媒

Prior to the D Day Landing I lived at Hinksay. I remember playing foot ball with my mates on an area we used to call the clay. It was and every day event to see aircraft flying above, mainly training. On this particular day a plane was flying low most of the day obviously on a training exercise. The plane seemed to be attempting to fly below some electrical pylons when all of a sudden it plummented towards the ground at Homer Farm crashing into the small pond that is now known as Homer Lake.

Me and my mates ran down towards the area, it took us about 15 minutes to get there by which time the Home Guard had already ringed off the crash area with barbed wire and were keeping guard of the area. An abulance arrived as the Home Guard were pulling the two casualties out of the wreckage. From where we were standing we could see one of the airmen was badly injured with his top lip severed and blood everywhere. Fortunateley they were both alive and were taken off to hospital. That was the last we saw or heard of them. Me and my friends were about 11 years old at the time and it was a very scary but exciting experience.

We had many exciting experiences during those years spending many hours helping the Home Guard with their signalling writing down messages and practicing semaphore.

I remember one time when me and my cousin were playing near the chemical stack which is now knon as Stirchley Chimney. Lying on the groungd was a .303 Lee-Enfield rifle, we couldn't believe our eyes. At first we contemplated keeping it but as we carried it along it became very heavy. Not half as heavy as our backsides would have felt if our dads had found out about it, so we decided to hand it in to the Home Guard. The sergeant there said didn't even know it was missing but seemed very keen to give us sixpence each for our honesty. Now then sixpence today would be worth abouth 2 1/2 pence which doesn't seem mcuch but when you consider my first week's wages in 1948 was 15 shillings (75p) it gives you some idea how much our find was actually worth.

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