大象传媒

This is the story of how my mother came face-to-face with the reality of warfare. The events described herein occured in, I think, 1941. My Father was in the Yorkshire & Lancashire Regiment, a platoon sergeant, and at this time he and his men were stationed at Hunmanby Gap on the coast of North Yorkshire, engaged in coastal defence, before they went overseas to North Africa. My parents had married a couple of years prior to hostilities. She was a teacher, he an Insurance Agent with the Prudential (bicycle, bowler hat, the whole nine yards!)and were living in Parkgate in South Yorkshire, not far from Rotherham. Children didnt appear until after the war.

Travel was not easy during the war; public transport, especially the railways, was primarily given over to the transport of war materials and personnel around the UK, so visiting my Father was not very easy. However, every few weekends, she would make the journey by train, as far as Driffield, and then a bus took her another part of the journey. There was a point at which she had to alight from the bus and continue on foot for a few miles along a lonely road high on the Wolds, which eventually took her to the camp where Dad was stationed.

It was, she recalled many years later, a blazing hot day in July or August, not a cloud in the sky. She trudged along the lane, suitcase in hand, and barely noticed a lone aircraft circling lazily overhead. Why should she? It was wartime, and the skies were filled with patrolling aicraft. After a while she did notice that this 'plane was passing overhead rather frequently and getting lower with each run. Then, she heard it coming behind her, lower and lower, nearer and nearer; as she turned to look, the air around her exploded in spouts of dust, and the unmistakeable noise of cannon-fire. It was then the penny dropped- this was a German plane, a Messerschmitt, and she was the target. She flung herself to the ground, paralysed with fear and bewilderment. The plane roared over her, circled round and then disappeared in the direction of the coast. It was several minutes before she could summon enough strength into her petrified limbs, and get to her feet. She was alone again, covered in dust, but unharmed, and, thankfully, no damage to her suitcase. Gathering her wits, she began to trudge toward her destination.

Firing on civilians is the stuff of war stories, and one thinks of columns of refugees being strafed in France in 1940. I am sure allied aircraft were guilty of the same thing. Young men, flying high-powered state-of-the-art Fighter aircraft, alternately bored and frightened. I think the Messerschmitt was just a lone raider, looking for the half-chance to inflict damage. As they were on their own, so I understand, they did not attract much attention from the Radar operatives, in skies full of aircraft, and so were able to sneak in over the coast from Holland, and carry out a short, sharp attack on any Military activity they happened to spot. This chap was not having much luck, probably starting to run low on fuel, and, out of frustration and, perhaps some form of perverse mischief, saw a lone person walking along a country lane. Maybe he did'nt want to return to base with his ammunition reserves intact and face the ridicule of his comrades. So, he thought he would have a bit of fun and make an 'Englander' grovel in the dust! I think after that first pass he would have realised that it was a woman, and, in any case, having made his point, decided to go home, before any serious opposition turned up.

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