大象传媒

One of my earliest childhood recollections of Spitfire and Hurricane planes taking off and landing. I grew up on the very edge of RAF Hawkinge Airfield just inland from Folkestone in Kent on the beautiful North Downs. Hell Fire Corner it was called. Today trains for the Channel Tunnel speed by these timeless hills.

My fourth birthday, 31 August 1940, came during the Battle of Britain. In the next two weeks up to the 15 September I recall my boyish fascination and thrill at what was going on in the skies above. I had a grandstand view of the airfield from my upstairs bedroom window. I could just about peep over the bottom edge of the window. My parents had provided me with used matchsticks so that I could count the Spitfires or Hurricanes as they took off. I recall the blaring siren as they often zoomed over our rooftops - our house was one of a row of detached shops at the very edge of the airfield. I moved matchsticks along the windowsill to form a 'flown-off' pile. Later on I was back on duty at my windowsill (I wonder if those in the corridors of power at the War Office realised that a four year old was so vigilant). As the planes returned I moved the matchsticks back along the windowsill to a 'back home' pile. Some returned with only one wing, others had one or both wheels missing. Another would have no tail, with streaming smoke and tragedy of tragedies one would land on another, causing both to burst into flames. My eyes raced with the Red Cross ambulance and fire engine as it bumped across the airfield towards them to rescue the young pilots, often scarred for life or worse.

My childhood mind began to ask questions which I remember voicing once to my Mum. You see, my matchsticks didn't add up...three were still in the 'out' pile, 'What's happened to them, Mummy? Why haven't they come back?' In later years I thought this must have been an unusual way to learn subtraction.

Another recollection is that my late father, Percy Pepin, being the local newsagent (we also sold cigs, sweets and stationery too) had a mobile caravan type kiosk at the RAF station or aerodrome as we called it. I inherited memorabilia and bits and pieces from those years, including a postcard view of a flying boat complete with a bullet hole in it, sustained during one of the many air raids on the aerodrome and village - a stray bullet had obviously hit my Dad's kiosk. As a fireman in the National Fire Service in the village my Dad and fellow crew members were often called as reinforcements to the aerodrome. After one raid I remember he quipped 'there were plenty of fires to put out...we had one each.'

Later in the war and after when the caravan cum kiosk was 'retired' and laid up in our garage next to the shop I remember the bullet holes in the wooden walls were a topic of conversation amongst our friends, young and old, who came to enjoy my - or rather Dad's - Hornby O gauge railway set up as a circuit around the walls of the old van.
David Pepin

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