大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from CSV on behalf of Jeff Northam and has been added to the site with his permission. Jeff Northam fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was three when the war started. I used to go out and watch the daylight dog fights between the British and German planes over Exeter railway station. Me and the other neighbourhood kids used to cheer on the Spitfire and Hurricane planes.

I remember one day a German plane came down in the old brick quarry. We got there before the police did and the pilot was still alive, but we couldn鈥檛 get near him because he was in a shallow swamp. Then the police came and carted him off. The other kids will probably say he waved at us but I can鈥檛 remember if he did.

We used to go in and out of all the bomb sites all the time playing games and finding things 鈥� odd things really there weren鈥檛 any bombs there. We used to make bracelets and rings out of the Perspex from broken bits of planes that we found. We sawed it off the scraps of aircraft and filed it into shape.

I don鈥檛 remember feeling scared. No one used to tell us not to go there, children had so much more freedom then. You could go wherever you liked.

We used to go to St David鈥檚 station in Exeter and wait for the troop trains to come through. We鈥檇 shout 鈥済ot any gum, chum鈥� to the American troops and they used to hurl sweets at us. We didn鈥檛 know it then but these Americans were probably on their way to Slapton Sands where a big force left to go to across to France to fight the Germans. Most of them didn鈥檛 come back I suppose.

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