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This gentleman lived in Tunbridge Wells all his life. He was 17 when he joined up. He worked in the RAF. He travelled all over England as part of his pilot training, even though he enjoyed it he never actually got 'wings' as the war ended, he says that it was rotten to simply be ‘chucked off’ when the war finished.

He remembers a pilot being shot down by the viaduct. The plane ploughed straight into the bog. When he went to see the plane it had already sunk in the bog. This killed the pilot. Two weeks later there was another crash. The pilot bailed out, and ended up in the vicarage, he was Polish and taken to the local hospital. On Sunday many of the laundry girls (from the laundrette opposite the vicarage) went to visit the polish man, in hospital.

When the air raid sirens shouted groups of people would go up to the roofs and cheer the pilots on. He was on leave for both VE and VJ day.

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