大象传媒

Aircraft and doodlebugs

Like all war children, I became very familiar with aircraft. We saw dogfights between Spitfires and ME109s and hit-and-run raiders, and could tell the difference, by the sound of the engines, not only between 鈥極urs鈥� and 鈥楾heirs鈥�, but between the different types of aircraft. I often saw the Channel full of planes, little black specks that seemed to hatch out of the sea like flies. These were bombers of both sides 鈥� Theirs coming in or Ours returning home.

The most exciting thing I saw was a one-off event, late in the war. The sky was full of strange pairs of planes 鈥� ours 鈥� going toward France. Two-by-two they flew, one close behind the other. Then someone exclaimed 鈥淭hey鈥檙e gliders!鈥�. I was grown up before I realised that what I had seen was the start of the Arnhem offensive.

One sunny afternoon in about 1994, I was in my garden. We live near a small private airfield and small planes buzz about all summer. Over and above them I heard another, heavier note and said to myself 鈥業f I didn鈥檛 know better, I鈥檇 say that was a Heinkel鈥�. Almost at once a dark shadow flew over, clearly marked with the black cross of the Luftwaffe 鈥� a wartime Heinkel. Though my brain told me it was on its way to an airshow or memorial of some kind, but my body wanted to run for the shelter, fifty years on.

When I was living in Hythe in 1944, aged 9, I was out shopping one day with my mother when we saw a strange lumpy little plane with a fiery tail, making an appalling racket as it flew over. Some days later (after the government had given up trying to explain the effects of these flying bombs as 鈥済as explosions鈥�), we learnt they were Pilotless Aircraft or V1s. Their reign of terror had started.

Anti aircraft batteries on The Roughs (the hills behind our house) did their best to shoot them down, often succeeding. One 鈥榟it鈥� landed uncomfortably close by in a neighbour鈥檚 garden, making an impressive hole. All the glass was blown out of our windows, curtains and all. Very strange 鈥� the curtains never did turn up and we never worked out where they had ended up. Our neighbours dog went into shock and literally had puppies 鈥� the stress started her into labour. In these houses all the rooms had fireplaces even if most were hardly ever used, and the soot came blasting down into each room from the chimneys. Such a dreadful mess to clear up, but of course one couldn鈥檛 complain. The sort of ironic, jokey way of coping kept everyone going, so people said to each other it would just save money on the chimney sweep!

The psychological torment these things caused is well-known, and ordinary life became almost impossible. They flew over every few minutes and several gun batteries were rushed to the hills just behind Hythe to destroy as many as possible, to stop them reaching their target, London.

My mother had to go shopping, so I had to go as well. We made our way in a series of quick runs between refuges 鈥� an official shelter at a friend鈥檚 house and so on 鈥� and we were cowering in the porch of a house on our route (people did that) when a dull blast signalled one had landed some distance away. This foolishly gave us a sense of deliverance, and we laughed, as we left our 鈥榮anctuary鈥�, to see that the porch was entirely constructed of glass: sides, door, roof 鈥� all glass. Some shelter!

As the doodlebugs reign of terror went on I grew both braver and more fearful. At nine, I had soon got so used to them that I worked out that if, in the daytime, I could see one, I was pretty safe - I had become expert at working out the trajectories from the point when I heard the engine cut out. But in bed in the dark I would suffocate with fear when I heard the engine stop, and many of us children were really ill, emotionally, with the strain.

By day we did what children always do 鈥� we played. On the steep hills behind Hythe (in centuries gone by, before the sea had receded, they had been cliffs) gun batteries were positioned to disable or destroy the doodlebugs. One battery damaged one which then landed on them killing everyone. A stark dead tree marked the spot for years.

When my stepfather started digging the hole for the abortive Anderson shelter, he did so at the far end of our very long garden. On the subject of its position, my mother remarked acerbically that if we were to get there in time, would have to hear the bombers take off in France. In fact, when the Doodlebugs started later in the war, we could hear them taking off if the wind was from the South.

I was playing half a street away when one battery scored a direct hit; the doodle bug exploded in mid-air above us. Mother was shouting for me, friends ran indoors, shrapnel fell like hail but no-one was even cut. When mother reached me, the elastic in one knicker-leg had broken and the offending bloomer hung down below the hem of my dress. To forestall the sort of telling off I had come to expect when danger had passed, I piped up 鈥淚t was the blast that did it!鈥�. (I must have got used by then to hearing all sorts of damage blamed on blast.) Mother sent this gem of childish wisdom off to the letters page of a newspaper and got five shillings for it!

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