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I was born on 23rd April 1939 so my memories of the early years of WW2 are not very good but I do remember some of the latter years quite clearly. My father was in Africa with the 8th Army and my mother and I lived with my grandmother at Beyton about four miles from the USAAF airbase at Rougham near Bury St Edmunds.

A number of B17 Flying Fortress squadrons were stationed at Rougham and I would see the neat bomber formations flying east in the early morning. Later in the afternoon they came back, this time not so neat, some aircraft with holes in their wings, tail or body and with engines stopped trailing smoke. Once a large machine gun was found in a nearby field, I assume jettisoned from a badly damaged aircraft trying to reduce weight to reach the airfield.

When we went to Bury market the bombers could be seen parked just over the hedge close to the road ( now the A14 ). We children would sit by the side of the road outside Beyton waiting for the American trucks to pass. This was not primarily to see the trucks but because we knew that the drivers would throw sweets and chewing gum to us. The Americans also gave very good parties for the village children where we had things to eat we had never seen before.

One night I was woken up in the dark by a loud low flying aircraft. It didn’t sound the same as the other aircraft that flew over but more like a fast moving tractor with a heavy load. Suddenly the engine stopped and all was quiet for what seemed to be a very long time. What happened next I was not ready for because there was a bright flash followed shortly by a huge explosion, the house shook and the doors and windows rattled. It was, of course, a VI flying bomb which decimated a large part of a nearby wood.

The only other time a huge explosion did the same to the house was early one morning just before breakfast while I was still in bed. My mother ran into the room, carried me into another bedroom and held me up to the window. I remember looking at a clear blue sky with just one white mushroom shaped object slowly floating down in the distance - I now know that this was a parachute. While I watched another dark object passed across my view - it was the rear end of a Flying Fortress. It seems that two bombers had collided one cutting the other in two. The front half of the bisected aircraft, containing the bomb load, went straight into the ground causing the explosion and killed eight of the aircrew while the tail section just glided down silently. My grandmother always maintained that there was an airman being dragged along behind the tail section by his parachute, which she assumed was caught on the jagged metal.

I always wondered about this accident and it wasn’t until I recently read a book by Ian McLachlan entitled “ 8th Air Force Bomber Stories “ that I learned the truth of what happened.
It was 19th July 1944 and the 388th Bomb Group had just taken off from the USAAF
Knettishall airfield to bomb Germany when one B17 “Little Boy Blue “ developed a problem in one engine. The aircraft heavy with fuel and bombs lost power and couldn’t climb or keep up the same speed as the rest of its squadron. After a short while the engine problem was sorted out and the pilot increased speed and climbed to get back to his correct position but a following squadron had overtaken him and he flew up into another B17. Little Boy Blue was cut in two and went down - the other aircraft although badly damaged returned to its base and landed safely. Only one airman got out of each part of the falling aircraft a waist gunner in the front part and the tail gunner from the rear. It seems that when the tail gunner jumped he found he was still near the falling tail section and delayed opening his parachute until he was well clear. My grandmother saw this and thought he was caught up.

My mother had a small seat for me on her bicycle and after breakfast we went to the cash site which was near Thurston about three miles from home. I remember we arrived at a field and inside was a huge crater, big enough to put a house in, surrounded by thousands of small pieces of metal, plastic and fabric. We were not there very long when a policeman came over and said we were to leave the site. As we turned to go my mother bent down and picked up a small piece of smooth shiny metal, about 50mm square and 2mm thick, which she gave to me some years later. I didnt find out what its function was until about 1952. We were by then living at Southwold, a few miles away from a USAF jet fighter base at Bentwaters - some of the married airmen and their families lived in the town. A Technical Sergeant and his family, who we knew quite well, lived a few doors from us. I took the piece of metal for him to see and asked if he knew what it was. He said it was a piece of armour plating from a bomber crewmembers flak jacket. This really made me think what we owed to those thousands of airmen who never made it back to the USA and I have kept it ever since.

Near Thurston railway station was a dump which held a great many fuel drop tanks, used to extend the range of fighters protecting the bombers. These tanks were made of aluminium, shaped like tear drops and were about 2 metres long. A few of these were acquired by the older boys who fitted pram wheels and cut holes in them to make very good “ go-carts “. Also by lashing planks of wood across two we had a pontoon for water activities on the local pond.

On VE Day in the evening I saw my first firework display, although these were not really fireworks. Some of the USAAF airmen from Rougham came to Beyton village green with Very pistols and fired what seemed to be hundreds of flares. These flares were used for signalling to and from the bombers when wartime radio silence was required - I suppose the war being over they were surplus to requirements. They were different colours but the most fascinating ones were the parachute flares which came down slowly with a very bright light. I finished up with quite a collection of used flare cases which were like 12 bore cartridges only bigger - about 40mm. diameter, it’s a pity but they have been lost during the last 60 years.
An older cousin of mine somehow acquired a Very pistol that night but no one had any live flares - probably a good thing.

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