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SCHOOLDAYS IN SUFFOLK

In my schooldays during the Second World War I lived with an Aunt and Uncle at Weston, in Suffolk. We were quite close to three airfields and I remember them being built. The impact on local life was memorable because few people had ever seen such huge machines operating before and the scale of the work was beyond most imaginations. The influx of so many workers from all over this country and from Ireland had quite an effect on the pubs and on the local lodging houses too, so I heard!

The nearest of the three airfields was at Ellough, used by the RAF and the Fleet Air Arm. (How many people, I wonder, can remember those particularly noisy aeroplanes called Barracudas?) The other two airfields were at Holton and at Flixton. For most of the time these two "bases" had B 24 Liberator bombers flying from them though earlier some noisy American fighter aircraft called Thunderbolts operated from Holton.

During the early mornings in 1944 and 1945, when the Americans were setting off to bomb Germany, the sky was filled with the sight and sound of hundreds of aircraft as they were marshalled into formation by the leader. Every now and then coloured lights from Verey cartridges were seen floating down as the battle formations took shape. We used to see "our" bombers from Holton flying over and we recognised them by the colour and stripes on their tail fins. Sometimes they were low enough for us to see the artistic "mascots" which were painted on the noses. Then we would watch them as they came back in the late afternoon or early evening – some damaged of course. One day we were cycling near the RAF base at Ellough when we saw a badly damaged B17 Flying Fortress make a forced landing with only one engine working. The crew climbed out and cheered the pilot !

I also remember one mission which was particularly tragic. It was a Saturday and the bomber force had set off later than usual. Consequently it was dusk when they returned and were all circling round ready to land. The airfield lights were switched on to guide them in and many of the aircraft had their lights on too. Unfortunately some German fighter aircraft had flown back with them and the Americans were sitting targets. About a dozen were shot down in our immediate area and there was a heavy loss of life because so many aircraft were too low for the crews to bale out

Another boy and I decided that all this was so interesting that it warranted a closer look. We would cycle off towards the airfield at Holton to watch the bombers taking off. One day we saw what we thought was a crashed bomber not very far from the lane as we cycled through Westhall. So we ditched our bicycles and crept over a couple of fields to have a look. I suppose, thinking back, we were quite "windy" about what we might find. The crashed aircraft turned out to be the remains of quite a number of wrecks which were dumped at a corner of the airfield when they were badly damaged or worn out. There was nobody about so we decided to explore further. It was like discovering treasure. Apart from anything else in the old aircraft which was serviceable or intact, what interested us most was the huge quantity of live ammunition, and it was not long before we had a substantial arsenal of half-inch bullets, smoke bombs and Verey cartridges in our back garden. Very soon we had to shift this lot to the wood down the lane in case somebody noticed what was going on!

We produced some rather spectacular fireworks out of all these. One particular type of bullet, which we took to be armour-piercing, was painted silver on the end. With a pair of pliers we snipped about an eighth of an inch off the end of it. Between the copper casing and the steel core we found a silvery powder which we took to be magnesium,- because of the way it burned when we put a match to it. We used a pin to get this out. The next step was to take the bullet out of the case, which we did by wriggling it about in a vice. Then we put the silver powder in the bottom of the case once we had emptied out the propellant cordite. We then took the innards out of a Verey cartridge and crushed it into a powder and filled the case of the bullet to within a half an inch or so of the top. The remaining space was filled with loose cordite and we put the "firework" into a tight hole in the ground.

Once we had put a match to the cordite it would burn with a gentle flame and this gave us time to get out of the way! As soon as the powdered Verey mixture caught fire it would spurt into the air, ten feet or so, in as many colours as we had prepared. Lastly, a flash and a fair bang as the ignited powder and the heat detonated the cap in the bullet. The best examples we produced were powerful enough to melt most of the bullet case away! Thinking back, I suppose we were lucky not to kill ourselves.

At the back of my Aunt’s house was the "wash-house", a brick and tile building in which was kept everything that could not be kept in the house - garden tools, bicycles, junk, coal and all the things which were likely to come in useful one day. In one corner of the wash-house was the copper - in which the weekly washing was boiled. One Monday morning, as was her custom, my Aunt had filled the copper and had lit the fire underneath. Before she went into the house to collect the clothes and things to be washed she had picked up an old school mackintosh of mine which she considered was no longer fit for wear. She put this on the copper fire to accelerate the boiling process which was about to start.

What she didn't know was that I had left two of those live Verey cartridges in the pockets of the macintosh. There were two loud bangs and when she rushed out of the house to see what had happened, she found the door of the wash-house wide open and several red, blue, green and yellow fire-balls whizzing round the inside of the building at high velocity. The building was only saved from total destruction because the force of the explosion had blown the grate out and had burst the copper. This had released the water and extinguished the fire. A woman of feebler constitution might have died of fright.

I remember getting a fair telling off about it, but fortunately my Aunt and Uncle could always see the funny side of anything.

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