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Richard John Edward Hambidge was a teenager in Westgate-on-Sea in Kent when war broke out. As a teenager he was very interested in the battles taking place in the skies above. He would cycle all over the East Kent hunting for souvenirs.

"There was a Junkers 188 crashed at Brooksend Farm. I went out there and collected cannon shells from the crash. I took them home and decided to take one apart to make a lighter. Unfortunately when trying to empty the detonator it exploded! The blast shredded my index finger and compressed my eardrum. Most disturbing was the fact that it broke off the top of my favourite knife hitting me right between the eyes. After a week my mother pulled it out with a piece of cotton. I went to the hospital with my hand which completely healed."

"One day while we were in the air raid shelter an ME109 crashed in the fields at the end of the road. The only one to crash in Westgate. It flew right over the top of our house. Very frightening because you cant hear them coming. As it crashed landed it hit one of the concrete posts that were planted in all the fields in Kent to stop invasion. Well I told my mum, 'I'm goin!' and I went to the crash site that was only at the end of our road. I ran straight across the ploughed fields and got to the plane where there were two guards on it already. They wouldn’t let you touch a thing. The pilot sat in the plane until two RAF men arrived and they took him away. Much later in life I wrote the story about the crash and the pilot, for a book called 'We Remember the Battle of Britain' along with the stories of 80 other people. An historian in the RAF was able to put me in touch with the pilot and I have written to the pilot, Dr. Herbert Bischoff, on several occassions."

Another interesting episode occured across the road from what is now 'The Swan' public house in Westgate.

"There was a sandbagged gun post there and the soldiers called me in to the shelter because it was too dangerous to be out in the open. It was low tide and they were trying to make out what it was that had ditched in the sea on the sand bank. It was a bomber and the crew was out waving like mad. The soldiers gave me a look through their strong binoculars. The Margate lifeboat came out to get them and I believe the Mayor of Margate met them when they were landed. It was just along this same place, Doon House, where the officers from Manston were billeted where a tragedy took place. I was watching two planes fight it out over the channel when one fell away to the sea and the other headed towards me. It was a spitfire and as it reached 'Doon House' it turned towards Manston and when it went to do the victory roll it crashed. It crashed on the parade square in Manston."

"I was working for a builder in Westgate when I heard the sound of explosions. I was up the ladder painting a window at the time and I got down sharpish and immediately lay down beside a brick wall. What was happening was this. A plane was towing a 'sleeve' for the gunners on the channel forts to use as target practice. The small aircraft was going backwards and forwards in front of the guns but they were shooting live shells towards the land. One shell didn’t explode like it should have done. A nearby worker was coming out of the building yard at Ross and Co. in Westgate and he was killed. It was in all the papers."

Richard has a number of registration plate’s souvenirs from German aircraft that he collected and mounted on a board that now hangs in the Spitfire Museum in Manston. The R. Hambidge collection.

"I was called up when I was 18 and I had to go to Maidstone. I did my training with the Sussex and Berkshires at the army barracks in Colchester. After six weeks I had an interview with an officer who constantly had to repeat himself. 'Are you hard of hearing?' he asked me and I told him about my accident with the cannon shell. Directly I said that he said 'How would you like to join the Royal Engineers then?' I said I would like that very much. Part of my training was about care and safety, and how to spot booby traps. We were told not to touch dead soldiers on the ground because they could be wired. Dont pull lavatory chains. There was a time when boxes were dropped from German planes that looked like chocolate boxes but they were booby traps."

Richard was shipped straight to France when his training was complete. "I was never in a company in this country. Seven months after D-Day I landed in Normandy. My entire service career was spent in Europe. My first unit was '811 Road Construction Company' and I drove a dumper at a tarmac plant for mending the road. This was at Bretteville station between Bayeaux and Caen. Later we moved through Belgium and stayed in Holland where we were billeted in a Dutch school. A few weeks before the end of the war we went into Germany near Osnabrook and that was when the war ended. I spent a short leave in Paris that was wonderful because it was the first anniversary of D-Day and the place went mad! The French people were just wonderful."

"One day my CO asked if I knew of anyone who could paint name tags for a large board with hooks to hold keys. I took on the job and when he came and saw my work he said, 'I say, that’s wonderful, how would you like to be doing this all the time?' I said I would and in two weeks I had my own workshop in Brunswick, two German civilians as staff, and we were making all kinds of signs. That’s where I started sign writing and I have been sign writing ever since then."

"I was demobbed in Germany and I got home on the very last day of 1947."

Dick Hambidge has details of his wartime campaign filling three volumes of the eighteen devoted to his autobiography. His local knowledge is legendary where he is known as ‘Mr. Westgate’.

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