大象传媒

This story has been added to the People's War website by Marie on behalf of Neville with his permission. Neville fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

On a visit to La Coupole, near St Omer in France in May 2002 I visited a site of the V2 Intercontinental Rocket.

In the reception area there was a V1 rocket (Doodlebug we called them), suspended in mid-air from the ceiling. This brought back a vivid memory of mine from the summer of 1944.

I was 7 戮years of age at the time. It was a lovely summer evening in August 1944 and I was in the back garden of our house 鈥� 118 Dunbar Road, Portsmouth. All of a sudden I looked up and a V1 doodlebug was descending and its engine wasn鈥檛 audible. Its motor/burner had gone out.

It appeared to be heading for the local pub 鈥� The Old Canal Inn 鈥� and was to the right of the pub. Our house was 2 houses plus a road away. It was just floating downwards like this when suddenly it seemed to be lifted by the wind and it disappeared out of sight. It landed in Locksway Road, a few hundred yards away hitting a house, and sad to say, killed some people.

I think it was one of only two V1鈥檚 to drop on Portsmouth. So as you can imagine seeing one 鈥渁irborne鈥� again bought back some very mixed feelings even after all these years.

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