大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War Site by a volunteer from the actiondesk on behalf of Fredrick Bean and has been added to the site with her permission. Mr Bean fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I lived in a small village in Cambridgeshire called Helpston. At Marholm a nearby village a Wellington bomber came down for some reason and just landed in a field. It wasn鈥檛 long before all the locals all went along to see what was going on. My Dad took me on his crossbar, it was about six miles.

When we arrived the Airforce had started to remove as much stuff as possible from the plane. Two days later we went again and there were tractors in the field removing the telegraph poles, or rather pulling them to the side of the field. They then commenced to remove the over head wires which were fixed to big dome like structures. It seemed to take an awful lot of airmen to do the job, and to us it was very exciting. Our parents spoke in hushed whispers. Four more tractors arrived and they were all attached to the plane with very heavy linked chains. All of a sudden as if by some strange force the engines roared, the tractors were unleashed and the plane slowly taxied along the field and took off.

No mention was really made of the reasons, but after the war it became accepted that some top secret stuff was being transported and the plane missed the airfield runway.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.