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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Roger Marsh of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Martin Simons, and has been added to the site with the author’s permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

These memories are taken from a special edition of a newsletter kindly submitted by Longstone Local History Group. It was edited by Liz Greenfield and published in Autumn 2002. Longstone was a village which sheltered evacuees and was comparatively unaffected by air attack, although the night sky was often lit by the fires of the Sheffield Blitz.

Longstone Local History Group - Martin Simons’ Story
by
Martin Simons
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Other parts to this story are at:

Introduction: A7887487

Roy Finney’s Story: A7887784

Frank, A and S Hurst: A7888396

Flames of Sheffield: A7888657

Molly Thornhill’s Story: A7888882

Tony Greenfield’s Story: A7889133

Stella Holmes’ Story: A7889971

Home defence remembered: A7890230

Burma servicemen Remembered: A7890492

Norman Hoare’s Story: A7891004

Norman Hassal’s Story: A7891202

Women’s Institute: A7891888

One family’s War Part One: A7892562

One Family’s War Part Two: A7893534

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Martin, an expert on aircraft, was evacuated to Eyam from Sheffield. He is a friend of Sheila Hurst's and now lives in Australia. Sheila asked him if he could tell us more about the German aircraft that dropped bombs in the area. This is his reply:

I can recall three incidents apart from the Sheffield bombing which we heard but did not see. The first was one night when a stick of small bombs fell near Great Hucklow, close to the Foolow-Hucklow road, where there is still a small isolated bungalow. I always suspected that the people in the house were accidentally showing a light and that the aircrew, being lost, thought they would aim at this target for want of anything better. Anyway it certainly scared the people and, I think, blew out a window or two. The boys were looking for shrapnel but it was all gone by the time I got there.

Much later in the war, I was in our tiny garden at Orchard Cottage in Eyam, which was the end of the row where Lucy Longden lived and close to the Royal Oak pub. I saw two aircraft flying very low from west to east, over Middleton Dale. I had no idea they were German and didn't see any markings at all. All my (supposed) skills at aircraft recognition were useless. As they flew on there were several loud explosions and a plume of smoke rose from the quarry close to the junction of the Eyam Dale road and the Stoney Middleton Road. Some damage was done but no one was injured. A large chunk of the quarry face was brought down, so saving the men some work I suppose. The two Junkers 88 bombers continued down the valley and machine-gunned Chatsworth House, where there was an evacuated girls' school. The bullets did some damage and nearly hit some of the rare paintings in the library. We were told this by the librarian (was it Mr Thompson?) when the school organised a visit to the house, several years later. The bombers were shot down over Lincolnshire by a Polish spitfire squadron. This is all written up in one of the aviation war history books. I used to sit on the cliffs opposite the place where the bombs fell, and even did some sketching from there. It was a favourite place for me.

Thirdly, one night I was woken by two doodle bugs which (as we later discovered) had been launched from Heinkel bombers over the North Sea and aimed at Manchester. We were living at Millhaven in upper Tideswell Lane by this time, on higher ground than the main village. I don't know the altitude of the bugs but they seemed very close and directly overhead. The noise was extremely loud. We heard later that they fell in New Mills. The thing that astonished me most about this was that my father refused to admit that what we had heard and seen that night were flying bombs. Later his excuse was, `Of course I knew that but didn't want to frighten the family.' As if we couldn't work it out for ourselves! This was an isolated attack, of course, but we didn't know that at the time.

Otherwise we had a very quiet war didn't we? I remember that a Wellington bomber came down on Eyam Moor and there was one that crashed in Lathkill Dale, I think, but I'm not sure what that was. There was also one occasion when a couple of Mosquitos did a spectacular ‘beat up' over the school. I was told one of the pilots was an old boy, who thought he would show off a bit. It was certainly a lot of fun for us! We used to see masses of vapour trails created by the American Flying Fortresses as they manoeuvred into their huge formations before setting off on their daylight raids. But they were so high and remote that this had little impact on us.

Pr-BR

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