大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War Site by Helen Churchill for Three Counties Action, on behalf of Derek Banks-Nash, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was fourteen coming up fifteen years old. I was there in Folkestone when the first soldiers came in on the ships from Dunkirk. Then I left Folkestone to come to Bedford to live with my aunt. I then returned home when the Battle of Britain was coming to an end. I then continued school at Folkestone until I was 16. During that time Folkestone was bombed, and machine gunned constantly. I remember on one occasion shopping in Tontine St. Folkestone and a German plane came in and machine gunned down the street. Luckily I was able to get into a shop doorway out of the way.

One evening coming from night school, the fire station was shelled, and being a public air raid shelter in the station, I thought I would go in there for cover, but found that the station had been shelled and the air raid shelter had been damaged.

Another vivid memory of mine was the time I spent on the beach, but the problem was getting through the barbed wire fences and the mine field, but we found a path way through, which we used every time to get us onto the beach, and having done that once, we knew the route to be safe. It was only in 1945 when the army came and cleared the minefield that we realised how close we had been to the mines. During the period when the flying bombs were coming over, the Americans set up a anti aircraft section, near the road that ran close by, which I used to go to work. In the fields where they had set up, I used to come home from work and went through this regiment (I think) that was on this piece of land, for just over two weeks before they stopped me and told me I couldn鈥檛 use this route anymore.

A really vivid memory I have of this time is acquiring a Spitfire tail wheel. I was walking past a Spitfire that had been bought to this field on its back, with a guard on duty. My mother asked me to go to the shop, which took me past this Spitfire. I noticed the tail wheel and thought 鈥淚 would like that鈥� as a souvenir. On the way back from the shops the guard had gone, so I went home and got my pliers and spanner, removed the wheel and took it home. Ten minutes later going back to see if I could acquire any more souvenirs, the guard was back and totally oblivious that it was missing.

I still have the wheel to this day.

My final memory of the wartime is walking home from the town one afternoon, the hit and run raiders were just coming in and the anti-aircraft guns were firing at them, and one of the anti-aircraft shells dropped by me onto the road about 4 or 5 feet away and exploded. I dived down onto the ground, but of course realising that once again I had had a narrow escape.

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