大象传媒

I was ten years old and my sister seven at the start of the war. We lived with our mother and grandfather on a smallholding of five acres near Wokingham in Berkshire.

Our father, a territorial and a veteran of the first world war, had joined the Royal Berkshire Regiment at the outset and was away from home. We grew some vegetables and kept a few livestock including two young pigs named, appropriately enough for the time, Adolf and Musso.

One morning in 1940 we were with our mother as she fed the animals when we saw a lone aircraft, I think it was a Dornier, bombing Woodley aerodrome which was only a few miles away across the fields. There were explosions and the rattle of machine-gun fire as the aircraft made for the nearby army camp at Arborfield. The aircraft banked and came towards us. We dived into the nearest shelter, the pig sty, and crouched on the straw covered floor of the sleeping quarters. Despite their bad image, pigs are clean animals and rarely make a mess inside, luckily for us.

The startled animals peered resentfully at us through the open doorway, astonished by our strange behaviour, but we were quite happy to occupy their sty until the lone bomber had droned off into the distance. We could always say afterwards that we had briefly shared a shelter with Adolf during the war.

When the night raids started, mother decided that we should sleep under the bed, the makeshift precaution recommended by the authorities at the time for those without a proper air raid shelter. There wasn't much head room but the three of us squeezed under the old iron double bedstead and went to sleep on a mattress on the floor.

In the early hours of the morning there was a whistling shriek which rose to an ear-splitting crescendo, and several thuds. We awoke terrified. When daylight came we heard that a German night raider had dropped a stick of bombs and one had landed in the road at Handpost Corner, two hundred yards away. It left a small crater, burrowed under the road and came to rest near the mains. Fortunately it failed to explode.

My grandfather, then sixty seven years old, said that he was going to have a look. Mother tried to dissuade him but he was determined to see what had happened. He had served with the Suffolk regiment in France and the Royal Engineers in Palestine during the first World War. The passing years, and rheumatism brought on in the muddy trenches of France had slowed him down, but he had been a regimental sergeant major and it would have taken a brave special constable to stand in his way.

In the event, a bomb disposal squad found the bomb under the road, dug it out, defused it and carried it into a nearby ploughed field where it was exploded. Later, my sister and I searched for pieces to keep as souvenirs. We found only one piece of bomb casing about four inches by three, long since lost with other childhood treasures. We never found out where the rest of the stick of bombs fell. Perhaps they are still there.

On holiday in 1987, I went back to Wokingham with my wife for a visit but the signpost at Handpost Corner and the old red bus shelter had gone, replaced by a roundabout. The march of progress had accomplished what the Luftwaffe had failed to do.

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