大象传媒

The war progressed and we seemed to be on the winning side as Hitler tried out his new weapon - the Flying Bomb. At first this horrible little monster got called all kinds of names. Some called it a "Bumble Bee", others a "buzz Bomb", but in the end everyone seemed to settle for "Doodle Bug". I don't know how it came to be called this as neither word was very appropriate; but Doodle Bug it became and Doodle Bug it stayed.

The first one I ever saw was on one beautiful summer evening in 1944. I was with a few friends standing outside a house in Bellingham Crescent. The sky was red as the sun was setting. It was a really lovely evening after a very hot day. We heard its engine popping away as it came towards us from the east. We looked up to see the black silhouette of this awful looking thing fly low directly above us.

We'd all heard about them as a few had fallen on London some days earlier. So we knew about how their engine would suddenly cut out before they came down and exploded. This one was miles off target. Later we leanrt that our fighter planes could turn them off course by tipping their wings. I don't know Where this one came down exactly. It just flew into the sunset. A lonely black death machine flying on to its own destruction out over the sea.

The flying bombs continued until the allied armies, now moving rapidly through France, captured the bases from where they were launched on the Normandy coast. In the meantime, however, though there were many to come, I didn't see any more over Brighton and Hove which were not on their course to London. Most of them came by way of the Kent-Sussex border which was nicknamed "Doodle Bug Alley".

As I was working on road haulage at the time and was frequently up in London, I saw several more as weeks went by and was in SE London when a V2 rocket came down in New Cross, causing much damage. I was told that Woolworths had been hit, but how true that was only the older residents would know. I didn't see the resuolt of this attack so can't confirm it. But I remember that it was always a worrying business when we had a London job. We were never sure of what was in store for us when we arrived.

I was always glad when we got clear of Croydon and Purley on the way home to Brighton. The Doodle Bug, or V1, was without doubt a nasty piece of work, but at least it could be seen coming. Not so the V2 which allowed no time for fear. The unfortunate victim whose name was on it was there one second, and gone the next.

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