大象传媒

Shortly after the Olive Road incident, I was again on my way home from the Knoll School, with my best pal Mike Richardson. The two of us were in Ingram Crescent at the point where the houses back onto the railway line, the sky was cloudless, all was still. No air-raid alert was in progress . . .

Suddenly an enormous (it seemed to us) German bomber (could have been a Heinkel 111) swooped low over the railway line, just missing the rooftops of the houses on our right. It was a twin engine bomber, flying I think on only one engine. Mike and I stood rooted to the pavement (we forgot the drill about flinging yourself against the nearest wall). Looking up we clearly saw the front gunner in his glass dome in the nose of the plane. He was hunched over his machine gun. He could have been dead; we didn't wait to find out!

Mike took off at great speed, running down one side of the Crescent, while I did the same, in the opposite direction. The bomber limped on towards the sea as the sirens began to sound. I often wonder if that plane made it back to his home base. If that front gunner was alive and trigger happy, I might not be writing this now.

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