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This story was submitted by Alison Tebbutt, Derby CSV Action Desk, on behalf of Roy Morton. The author has given his permission and fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Picture the scene, mid-summer June or July 1940, days of rationing, air raids and smoke screens lining the street. I lived at 12 Albert Road, Chaddesden, with my mum Lily who ran the grocery shop at the corner of Olive Grove, with a concrete barricade cutting Albert Road in half at number 20. My dad, Tom, was serving with the Yorks and Lancs regiment in the Army in North Africa. Towards the end of the war he served in Amgot, the Allied Military Government of Occupied Territory, in Italy.

Names I can remember from those war years are Dennis Hand, Joey Lebeter, his sister Olive, Gordon and Carl from the Hawkesworth family, Enid and Alec Tunnicliffe, Jean Oakes, Jean and Alan Leatherland, Doreen Davidson, Mrs Morrell and the Wadsworths.

Now to the story. My mum was talking to a customer in the shop about a plane that had landed at the Balloon Barrage site at Alvaston. The next day, this boy, thinking the Germans had landed, set out on his own to see if it was true. In those days, boys were all dressed the same. White shirt, grey short trousers, grey socks usually at half mast and black shoes.

A mixture of fear, uncertainty and curiosity gripped me as I walked down Albert Road, turning left on to Meadow Lane over the canal bridge and through the Chaddesden sidings near to the black sheds. I’m sure that there was a prototype of the first diesel train in the sheds. My recollection is of a silver and red engine with a number something like 1001. Next I crossed the railway, where we used to put pennies on the line to be flattened by the trains. Then came the important part of this important journey. Crawling through the long grass, heart thumping; I didn’t want to be arrested as a spy, I reached the banks of the river Derwent. Slowly I peeped out across the river and sure enough there was a plane on the ground at the Ballon Barrage site.

Joy overcame the fear; it was one of ours, a fairey Battle Bomber with all the splendour of the R.A.F. markings, I ran all the way back home, through the sidings, over the canal. Along Meadow lane up Albert Road, before bursting into the shop and declaring ‘Mum, it’s alright, it’s one of ours.’
I never did find out why the plane landed there.

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