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I went to bed on June 5th, just after midnight, I suppose, when it was all dark, I heard this throbbing, and I used to wake up wide when I heard aircraft, and my father came into the bedroom and said, ‘Blimey son, there’s a big raid going on somewhere’, and it went on and on And the searchlights which we could often see from our house started off and they switched them off because there was a low cloud ceiling but the thundering roar of these aircraft going over, then it would stop, then it would start again. Then came dawn and we got up, and there was still the odd noise. As children we were enjoined when we heard aircraft coming over to take shelter in houses, not particularly from the aircraft but because when the anti aircraft guns started up shrapnel fell everywhere. You had to go and keep out of the way. I said I was not going to school, and then the neighbours came and said the Invasion had started. We used to be scared when we heard the flugelalarm, that’s the bell the Germans used to ring just before they started firing.

I remember we were sitting one day when we heard the ‘flugelalarm’, this was just after the invasion when there were beat-ups by British aircraft. I was sitting on the wall with my friend and we heard the flugelalarm, and we couldn’t hear anything else. Then five feet above us, up the valley came a Spitfire followed by eleven others and they were so close you could see the stitching on the pilot’s helmet. I don’t know how the lowest one climbed over the hillock and they were off down to the Marette guns, which they shot up. There is a wall there, and a little valley by the greenhouses, and they shot over. It all happened just like, that, we didn’t have time to run and hide.
MALCOLM WOODLAND

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