大象传媒

This is less of a story, more of an anecdote. It concerns what I believe is the first night the flying bombs came over. I was about 13 at the time, evacuated and attending Bruckley Central Boy's School, which was billeted in a large house in Dorman's Park, Surrey.

The house belonged to a Naval Captain who was away at the war. We all lived in the house as in a boarding school.

The boys were put on a rota to act as "firewatchers" to locate and, I suppose, deal with any incendiary bombs.

The night in question I was one of the firewatchers, and I and some of the other boys were in the "Captain's Room" at the top of the house, with large windows giving a view over the grounds down to the lake. We were the first to see and hear the doodle bugs, one or two as I recall, belching flames and emitting a dreadful noise.

My memory tells me that they were at window height, but suppose this is not posssible unless they were running out of fuel. There was no panic, we were not frightened, it was rather exciting !

The authorities moved quickly and arranged to send us all to Wales possibly within a day or so. I recall lying on my back in the grounds watching a Hurricane or Spitfire trying to to tip one of the intruders over, but we were soon all on the train to Maesteg in Glamorgan where we spent the rest of the war.

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