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A WARTIME MEMORY

In early October 1998 two men on the church tower of St Michael and All Angels, Yeovil, gently lowered to the ground an old wooden flagpole, its bright aluminium replacement now reaching into the autumn sky. Watching from below, Ron cast his mind back 56 years to an August evening in 1942.

This 13—year-old lad and his nine-year-old brother, Mervyn, were playing cricket in the recreation field alongside Grass Royal School. They were part of a group of kids from Matthews Road. In charge of the young team were Ron and Merv’s father Arthur Batty and the boys’ uncle, Fred Cross, from Ruislip in Middlesex who, with his wife, Nell, were enjoying a few days respite from German air attacks on London.

With the hands of the clock on St Michael’s Hall showing ten minutes past nine the chilling wail of air-raid sirens began to sound across the town. The game continued. After all, it was still light enough to play. Wartime British Double Summertime had taken care of that and, anyway, nothing ever happened around here!

Unknown to the players two Focke Wulf fighter-bombers, each carrying a 500 kilogramme high-explosive, delay action bomb below its fuselage had already crossed our coastline near Seaton in Devon, unnoticed by our defence system. Having flown low together across the English Channel from Caen-Carpiquet to Lyme Bay, Feldwebel Karl Blase and Unteroffizier Kurt Bressler, with their skilful navigational use of landmarks, hedge-hopped their aircraft and jumped hills and trees until somewhere near Axminster they came to the Southern Railway main line from Exeter to Waterloo. Using this route, one closely behind the other, would take them past Chard and Crewkerne to Yeovil Junction.

Eight-year-old Colin Whetham was riding on his dad’s tractor at Wicketts Beer Farm, East Coker, very close to the railway. He had just hopped off the tractor to shut a gate and was startled by the two aircraft as they roared past just above the track. He could see the pilots, they were so low. Colin, who now lives in Marsh Lane, Yeovil, says it was all over in seconds and in his mind he can still see them as clearly as he did on that day.

Maggie Garrett, Ken Young and Den Cook were cycling home to Yeovil after a day out at West Bay. They had just passed the Portman Arms at West Coker and were walking up the hill when they spotted the FW190s flying very low and fast as they followed the railway line past Sutton Bingham. They all lived in Eastville, near Gordon Road, and were in for a nasty shock when they arrived home.

Boy Scouts from the Church of the Holy Ghost in Yeovil were camping by the riverside at Sutton Bingham when the enemy duo raced by. Three of the lads, Bernard John and Terry Mahoney, lived at 22 Gordon Road. Little did they know their home was to be badly damaged during this attack.

Young cyclist Bernard Dacombe had just crossed the railway at Whistle Bridge on the A37 road to Dorchester and on reaching the brow of the hill near the turning to Barwick, heard the sound of powerful aircraft engines. From a gate at the side of the road he watched the two Germans , pilots clearly visible, skim the railway bridge. On reaching Yeovil Junction station they each banked steeply to the right and then quickly countered the manoeuvre, banking steeply to the left, taking them almost over Bradford Abbas, then over Babylon Hill.

Peggy Cusack, now married to Ron Dennett and living in the White Mead area of Yeovil, was in Compton Road as the aircraft passed over. She remembers vividly their large black crosses as they curved sharply left towards their final landmark, St Michael and All Angels Church tower.

Nine-year old Graham Toms and his mother were travelling on a bus from Sherborne to Yeovil. On reaching the railway bridge at Pen Mill he spotted the FW190s flying, it seemed, not much higher than the roof of the bus. He could see the pilots as the aircraft passed to the east of the Great Western Railway station.

In Cromwell Road Ben Pike was digging deep into his back garden as he prepared to build an Anderson shelter when the two aircraft suddenly appeared, the pilots easily seen as they positioned themselves for the attack. Brian Kibby, eight years old, was walking near his home in St Michael’s Road with his cousin, Edna Rendall, and her boyfriend, Ron Hannam, when they were shocked to see the low-flying Germans pass behind St Michael’s Hall and the church tower. Brian, now living in Bucklers Mead Road, remembers seeing the enemy pilots a few brief seconds from their target.

Just four minutes after the initial warning the sound of low-flying aircraft made the cricketers look towards the church. As if in a slow motion dream, they watched the leading FW190, tilted on its wing-tip, in a very tight turn, skimming the tower as the pilot quickly lined up with St John’s Church — its intended target lying directly between the two towers.

In that terrifying moment the bomb was released. Gently rocking and slowly rotating, the sinister black object flew low across the school and continued at roof-top height over back gardens in the direction of Gordon Road. As the aircraft climbed steeply away to avoid the late-ascending barrage balloons, the second machine, closely following, released its bomb two or three seconds later, which fell into Dampier Street just short of the target, the Nautilus Naval weapons factory (now a bus garage) in Reckleford.

Billy Hayward was in his dad’s garden shed and through the window saw the first bomb strike the roof of a house in the Matthews Road cul-de-sac then bounce into the garden before tumbling its way towards the houses in Gordon Road.

By now the two adults had taken the trembling fearful youngsters into a school air-raid shelter near the abandoned wicket. Time stood still as they waited during this frightening unexpected pause in their lives. Little Shirley Greenslade was crying. Suddenly warm air was thrust into the shelter then immediately drawn out, leaving them breathless, as a muffled explosion shook the ground, then a second, more distant one, followed by an eerie silence. At No. 35 St Michael’s Road, five-year-old Derek Collins was being carried downstairs from his bedroom after the first bomb had exploded. He was frightened to see pieces of ceiling falling to the floor and thought the shaking house was about to collapse. From the Grass Royal recreation field shelter the stunned, silent young cricketers slowly began to emerge to a darkened, smoke-filled sky and scattered burning debris. Nine-year-old Ruth Hill and her friend, Beryl Day who lived next door to each other in Matthews Road, came running across the field, crying and homeward bound, having been in Brooks’ fish-and-chip shop in Grass Royal as the enemy aircraft completed their bombing run. Leaving the grown-ups to draw stumps, the scared players took to their heels like frightened rabbits. Home would be a good place to be at a time like this!

As Ron and Merv ran indoors they found their mum being comforted by Aunt Nell, crouched inside the family’s steel air- raid shelter. Arthur (an air-raid warden) , Fred and Nell (an ex-nurse) then went off to help wherever they could. Quickly on the scene were Polish Army ambulances stationed at St Michael’s Hall.

In the back garden of 16 Gordon Road, Albert Hussey was feeding his rabbits when the bomb exploded in the gardens of Nos. 13, 14 and 15, making a crater nine metres wide by two metres deep. He was severely injured and died shortly afterwards. At No. 22, the family home of the three Boy Scouts, their sisters, Margaret and Teresa, were shocked to find a bedroom window, in one complete piece, had been blown into the room, covering their baby brother’s cot which shielded him as the ceiling fell. Little Brian was unhurt.

In a Grass Royal back garden, George Mitchell was killed instantly by a piece of shrapnel. With George was his father-in-law who received just a few minor scratches.

Unhindered by English fighter aircraft (there were Spitfires at Exeter and Warmwell, near Dorchester) the Germans, who had failed to hit their target, returned safely to their airfield in France as daylight began to fade.

In the aftermath two houses in Gordon Road had been demolished and others badly damaged. The second bomb, in Dampier Street, destroyed eight houses and badly damaged many more. Eighteen-year-old Norman Glover lay trapped, out of sight, under floorboards. He had been walked over many times before rescuers found him. A piece of shrapnel, later removed from his skull, was kept by his mother as a reminder of his miraculous escape. Norman’s 58-year-old aunt, Elsie Farwell, was one of the 26 injured that day. Sadly she died the following day.

A total of 15 houses were destroyed and badly damaged, beyond repair. A further 970 houses received varying degrees of damage. The all-clear sounded at 9.40 on this Wednesday evening, 5 August 1942, the very last time bombs would fall on Yeovil.

In 100 years the old St Michael’s flagpole, from its lofty perch, had seen it all as over the years the surrounding fields became housing estates and countless souls had worshipped within the walls beneath., but in August 1942, with almost half its lifetime completed, the encounter with two Luftwaffe fighter-bombers had to be just a little too close for comfort.

Opposite the wrecked houses in Gordon Road, William Score cut the shape of a cross in his privet hedge in memory of those who died. Their names can be found on the War Memorial in The Borough. The cross remained for many years.

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