大象传媒

Picture if you will an idyllic scene of children playing on a village green, the sun is shining and all seems well with the world but it was not so. There was a war on and on our village green had appeared steel pots with chimneys called smokescreen dispensers they looked lethal to us boys playing cricket.
The sky over Teesside was dotted with Barrage Balloons and we had a couple of sites not far from us, they were manned mainly by Women or Airwomen I should call them.
The site consisted of a winch truck that had a metal cage over the controls where the women operated the raising and lowering of the big gas bag that had chains cables and other things hanging off it to snag enemy planes, they were there to give ICI, the Steelmills and Shipyards some defence against low flying attacks.
This sunny afternoon with us Norton Green boys fighting another needle match with the boys from down the village we had noticed dark clouds forming over Tees Bay, from the green you could always see the weather fronts almost out to Redcar as the cold North sea breezes met the warm land winds.
Well into the game there was a rumble of thunder and we with the spectators sitting on the seats around the green stopped to watch the distant lightning. Suddenly there was a distant flash of flame and we saw a Balloon start to fall earthwards streaming fire, this was followed by another and we could see the local balloons descending rapidly from a clear blue sky whilst the ones out of Middlesbrough caught fire and came down burning, I believe it was 18 in total, us kids were jumping up and down and laughing with excitement at the spectacle. A man standing near said shut up there are probably people dying over there as the heavy cables crash down to earth. We had not thought of that and it sobered us all up as we watched the last of them come down. The girl on the winch would have the steel cage as cover but mainly the others on site only had slit trenches. When it was all over we boys got on with the game as the sun was still shining on us, this often happens with our North sea regulated weather, one half in sunshine the other getting it in the neck. We never found out if anyone was hurt as the papers did not give out news like that and I often wondered what had happened under those dropping steel cables, it would not be fun for those girls on the site I am sure.
If memory is true we did win the game as usual that sunny afternoon because we had two cricketers who played as boys in the local cricket club, well we were the nob hill end of the village.
Frank Mee.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.