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I left Carre’s Grammar School Sleaford, which is in Lincolnshire at the age of 16½, the year that war was declared, in the September.

I then found employment with the local County Council Architect’s Department as a Junior Draughtsman and stayed there until I was called up in August 1942.

Sometime, I think it was during1941, I had cycled home for lunch, and halfway back on my return journey the air raid sirens sounded. I decided that the best course of action was to cycle on to the office and get under cover.

The County Council Offices were a large three storey building on the outskirts of the town, overlooking open countryside and the Architects worked on the top floor. On arriving at the Office, I ran up the stairs, (No lifts in those days), and as I approached the third floor landing I heard a terrible noise of the engine of a low flying aircraft. There was nobody else in the office so I dashed to the front window and saw a German bomber at roof top level and it seemed to be coming straight towards my window. This all took place in seconds, as at the same time as I looked out of the window almighty hell broke loose, as the aircraft gunner fired into an army camp situated in the grounds of a Manor House nearby and the army returned fire with their own machine gun. It was all over in a flash, the plane more or less went straight over the top of my window and I understand it then went on to Grantham and bombed a factory in the town.

The sequel to this story is that my mother, at the same time, had gone down the High Street in Sleaford to do some shopping. She again was on a bicycle, when she heard this commotion going on, all she remembers was that she found herself in her Grocery shop. She did not know how she got in there, but she was in front of the grocery counter with her bicycle.

I think this was the first time that a low flying German plane had been seen over Sleaford and for a young lad it was rather a frightening experience and took me sometime to get over it.

My second encounter was some 3 years later on 7 July 1944. I was now in the Army and already in Normandy with 234 Field Company Royal Engineers. We had completed a Bailey bridge across the Caen Canal and were doing various other supplementary tasks relating to the bridge, one being that we had to put a boom across the canal because the night before a frogman had been caught with explosives as he tried to get to the bridge to blow it up.

We had just succeeded in getting this boom across the river at around nine o’clock at night and had only just finished, when the first 500-bomber raid took place over Caen. We were able to watch this for about an hour, as we were some eight miles away from the city, and we were all very pleased to think that these bombers were on our side.

The bombing was over around ten o’clock and it was almost dark, so we decided to get our heads down and retire to our ‘nice comfortable beds’ that was in a hole in the ground. I was actually sitting on the edge of my slit trench when I heard the roar of an aircraft engine. Before we knew it, a German fighter came up the Caen Canal at low level and just let rip at all the chaps who were still on the bridge and surrounding area. It was all over in seconds, all I remember seeing as I jumped into my slit trench, was red tracer bullets on either side of me and the plane was gone.

As a result of the raid, one man was lost and three others were injured.

By this time, of course, I had 2 years of Army Training and Service behind me and all this was something you had to accept.

This story is my account of my first and second close encounter with enemy aircraft

Ken Joyce
234 Field Company Royal Engineers

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