´óÏó´«Ã½

This story has been submitted to the People’s War website by Peter Quinn of the Lancs. Home Guard, on behalf of Genda Wright and has been added to the site with Mrs. Wright’s permission………

When I was five in 1940, the Germans were bombing the London docks and we moved to my Gran’s in Victoria Dock Rd. On this day my mum and I came out of a shelter. The docks were on fire from end to end, a big, big, red glow. My mum decided it was too dangerous — so we’d go and meet my Dad who was in East Ham.
As we walked down the road, at the end, was a barrage balloon site manned by women, who were trying to winch it in. To our astonishment, clinging to the fins of the balloon was the figure of a German airman! He was over a hundred feet in the air. We had to go so didn’t find out what happened to him.
A long time after the War, say twenty years, my mum saw a TV programme with Douglas Bader, the fighter ace on it. She decided to write to him and ask about this airman. She told him the story and he wrote a long reply saying the balloon had broken adrift and floated down in Rainham in Essex and the airman had fallen off, breaking both legs. He spent the rest of the War as a prisoner in Canada.

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