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My father had a bread and grocery shop. I helped with the packing the van before I left for school in the morning. I was able to drive the van when I was nine years old. I was allowed to move it and I learned to move it from the shop to the house. Of course, this was not official. When the war started, the men who worked for my father as drivers were called up. During this time a lady driver substituted and I was sent with her to show her the delivery route.

One day, I was about 15 or 16, whilst out on delivery with her, near the village of Stony Heath, I heard a familiar sound overhead. I looked up and saw a Donier German aircraft, which was flying quite low. When I told the driver she got such a fright that she drove off the road and into a ditch. All the bread and cakes shot forward and landed on us in the front of the van.

When we had sorted all of that out, we continued on our way to Baughurst village. One of my first calls was a farm. Right next door to the farm was an army searchlight unit. It appears that this was the target of the Donier, though we could not understand why it had taken such risks, flying so low in the daylight hours. The Donier had been straifing (firing on) that unit — that was the sound that I had heard.

On arrival at the farm, I noticed that high above our heads, along the brickwork of the farmhouse was a row of bullet marks. Beneath this was a footpath. When the house was hit, the farmer had been walking along the path when the wall over his head was struck by a row of fire, but he himself was not hit. When I went into the house, the farmer was sitting on a chair and his wife was giving him tea. He was white-faced and so shocked he could not speak. He had just experienced the most frightening moment of his life

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