大象传媒

For the first and second parts of this story please go to Rehearsals for War - A2233982 and Phoney War? What Phoney War?? - A2720558 respectively

The exact period when these events occurred is now uncertain after about 65 years. My wartime diaries have helped in establishing when certain events and postings happened but do not give a positive indication here.
(Oh! For a better memory or better kept diaries).

Anyway it was 1940 and for this story I was at a searchlight site called Darland Hill which was on the brow of a fairly steep hill above Gillingham, in Kent. The hill dropped away even more steeply on the other side, while on a third side it dropped through what, before the war, had been a Royal Engineers Boy鈥檚 Barracks.

It was a useful posting, I thought, as it was near 鈥渃ivilisation鈥� (Many AA sites, both guns and searchlights, were in remote areas). It had a number of advantages 鈥� about half a mile walk down the hill you are in upper Gillingham and there, in those days, was a cinema and a pub. It was not very far before you were (are) in Gillingham proper with several more cinemas (in 1940) and many more pubs. But, even more important, Gillingham adjoins Chatham and my pre-war girl friend, as she then was, had been mobilised with the WRNS 鈥� having joined when they were re-formed just before the war 鈥� and was now at the Gunnery School in Chatham Naval Dockyard. This meant that fairly often our short leaves coincided enabling us to 鈥済o to the pictures鈥� and the pubs and eating establishments.

It was on one such occasion that I ran away, the right way in the event, from a descending bomb. I had just left the site and was about to walk down the hill to Gillingham to meet my girl-friend when I heard the unmistakable sound of a bomb coming down. I don鈥檛 recall seeing the aircraft. The sound of the bomb seemed to be coming from the direction of Gillingham and approaching. Bearing in mind that we were on the brow of a hill dropping away in both directions, I sprinted towards the sound of the bomb, with the idea, if I鈥檇 got it right, of putting the top of the hill between myself and the explosion, hoping it would go off the other side. I was lucky: it did, going off somewhere in the direction of Gibralter Gun Site which was in the valley on the other side of the hill.

Darland Hill was quite an eventful place. On another occasion I was lying on my bed, during the day, using my rolled up blankets as a pillow. Hearing the noise of very low flying aircraft approaching, I dived out of the hut to join several others. I just had time to see two Hurricanes as I thought, in 鈥榣ine astern鈥�. Almost immediately, the rear Hurricane opened fire on the front one. Everybody scattered, since some of the shots had come our way. We found a number of bullet holes in our hut (sleeping quarters). The front 鈥淗urricane鈥�, of course, was a Messerschmitt Bf109. The story does not end here, however. When I was about to turn in, as I pulled my blankets to open them, something dropped out on to the floor. It was a bullet from the Hurricane! That concentrated the mind. I still have the bullet.

I said the Darland Hill posting was an eventful one. The final exciting thing that happened here was during night operations. I think it was before Gillingham had a particularly bad raid, when the Maidstone and District Bus Depot was hit.
It so happened that the detachment had been issued with a bang up to date 150cm Searchlight 鈥� the one on four wheels which was towed to the site by a lorry. While I cannot vouch for it, it was rumoured to have twice the range of the 90cm and 120cm (Converted) lamps which the majority of the sites had and was visibly more powerful than the latter.

We exposed the light on an incoming aircraft and may have illuminated him. It may be for this reason, or perhaps because the light was clearly a 鈥榮pecial鈥� one, that he turned slightly and dropped his load of bombs on us. I was at the generator as No 9 ( the generator operator) my job at the time. I also had a companion for some reason, which was unusual. The first three bombs of the stick landed near us, picked us up and slammed us back down on the ground. We found afterwards that the edge of the nearest crater was very close, but the blast was in soft earth and had mainly gone the other way. The rest of the stick had amazingly gone through the Royal Engineers camp without hitting a building and the last one dropped the other side of the A2 and landed in the car park of the Central Hotel, without even breaking a large (lounge?) window. The tarmac in the car park showed where it had been filled in with new material for quite a time after the war.

I think it must have been with some relief that I went to my next posting.

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