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I was sixteen. Enemy air raids had become less frequent during 1944, but with the build-up of troops they began again. One such raid is much like another, I suppose, but one vivid memory is of the second day after a huge oil tanker had discharged it’s valuable cargo into the underground storage tanks about two miles away from the docks area, via a pipeline. The tanks were hidden in a copse and were quite invisible from the air. However, on the night in question, a group of German bombers flew over and pinpointed the oil dump with alarming accuracy. It exploded into flames, setting the surrounding woods and fields ablaze, lighting up the town with flickering red and orange flames. It was a few days before the invasion force would set off from the South Coast, and Falmouth harbour was crammed with invasion crafts of all shapes and sizes.

Hundreds of tank-landing craft and personnel carriers, all with machine guns mounted, merchant navy ships, motor torpedo boats, and gun boats filled the great harbour, together with two Royal Navy destroyers and a cruiser. The first explosion at the oil dump woke me with a start, and I sat up to find the bookcase, which normally fitted on a shelf above my bed, hanging round my neck, books piled everywhere. All hell was being let loose across the bay, and I rushed to the window to see. It was a sight to rival the best of Guy Fawkes nights, with the Americans firing off tracer ammunition in all directions, and the bigger guns of the Navy firing at steady intervals.

I craned my neck to see, and then, as I looked straight ahead I saw a pattern of tracer bullets heading straight for me from over the water. Hypnotised, I stood watching the murderous stream of fire approaching and staggered when they hit the stone window sill under my hands, sending fragments of stone flying up. The tracer was gone in seconds, and I drew my head back, sweating in the heat. The noise became frightful and I ran down stairs calling for my parents to get them down into shelter. Our home had been converted into a sailors recovery home, and father was already downstairs organising the residents, but mother was still in her bedroom. We sped down together, and just before reaching the ground floor there was the most awful noise and I thought we had taken a direct hit. It was — almost. The bomb fell next door and exploded, flinging open our side door, blasting its hot breath along the corridor and in two directions sideways, sending our hall porter on his backside our of the front door, and into the road, and father along the passage, breaking open the fire door as he went and ending up with him out cold across the billiard table.

Gathering our very scattered wits, we headed out through the remains of the side entrance, down the path and into the Anderson shelter in the garden. There we stayed, in company with a handful of naval ratings and domestic staff, listening to the progress of the raid. I found the inactivity worse for the nerves than the excitement of being in the thick of things, and waited, listening for the guns and identifying them as American or British. The Navy used multiple rockets — or Pompoms — and the air in our shelter compressed and expanded sickeningly as they fired. I noticed my right foot was streaming blood, and found a sizeable piece of shrapnel half buried in the flesh. There was no sleep that night, and the silence that followed the raid was almost tangible. Not a lot of damage was down to the town but the Germans had hit their target, and several houses, such as ours and next doors, were damaged. I don’t think one sheet of glass remained unbroken in windows for miles around, and doors swung crazily on their hinges, creaking a little in the quiet breeze.

Two nights later the fleet was gone. All the Americans and Canadians, sailors and soldiers. All the landing craft and escort ships were streaming over the channel to join with other forces in the greatest armada in history, leaving our southern ports. Thousands of bombers left airfields in Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, East Anglia and the southern counties, and the sky was dark with planes growling their way over to France and Germany, bent on righting a great wrong. Hitler’s Third Reich was crumbling and this was the body-blow — a miracle of planning and engineering genius, to finally put an end to the monstrous reign of the Nazis.

This story was submitted to the People's War Website by T Bowdrey of CSV Action Desk on behalf of David Thomson, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site terms and conditions.

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