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This story was submitted to the Peoples War site by Jas from Global Information Centre Eastbourne and has been added to the website on behalf of Mr Field with his permission and he fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions

The Field family lived in Longstone Road Eastbourne and we had a laundry called the Provident Family Laundry in Tideswell Road Eastbourne.

During the war my mother pushed me in my pram and she put me in an alley way beside the house. The jerry plane came up the street with his machine gun firing and the bullet went through the guttering of the house, down into the alley way and through the pram鈥檚 hood.

We lived at 7 Nelson Terrace Polegate, later renamed as the Hailsham Road. In that house we got bombed out several times, the kitchen and other windows blown out. My mum could hear the doodlebugs coming and she used to shout to us 鈥淜ids, get under the kitchen table鈥�.

A division of tanks used to park in the fields opposite 7 Nelson Terrace and it was a great treat for me and my pals to climb all over them.

Still in Polegate a friend of my sister, Maurice Staplehurst witnesses a UK bomber who had been hit on return from a raid by enemy plane over Eastbourne and it crashed in a field by the old A22.

Maurice then ran to the crash site and helped the pilot whose hair was still burning.

We then moved from Polegate to a house called Glanton in Upperton Road Eastbourne.
We had a Mrs Bailey and 2 children who had been evacuated from London, staying with us. My sister Betty and Richard my eldest brother and the family went for a walk on the downs above Eastbourne and witnessed the railway being bombed.

The bomber plane got hit from ground fire and the pilot and crew bailed out. Later a man in a cricket outfit was spotted in the Meads area.

This was not the cricket season, a call was made to the police from a police box and later a suspect was caught, and is thought to have been a spy, who came from the doomed aircraft.

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