大象传媒

'This story was submitted to the People's War site by Edward Fawcett for Three Counties Action on behalf of Derek Stainsby and has been added to the site with his permission.The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

'I was nine when the war started living in south Lincolnshire.We had the Parachute Brigade stationed at Grimsthorpe Castle near the village and I remember going to the top of the church and seeing Dakotas pulling gliders on the way to Arnham and I was counting them as they went over.There were scores of planes.When the Lancasters took off from the airfields further north in Lincolnshire they used to come over us quite low,that would be in the evening,and the Fortresses would be much higher up when they came over us,assembling before flying off,but that would be in daylight.

One day one of the Flying Fortresses lost height and smoke was coming out of it and it spiralled down.I can't remember if any parachutes came out of it.It crashed about three miles away.The fighter planes used to do practice on a drogue towed by a twin-engined plane.I remember seeing one fighter clip the plane and losing a bit of its wing and causing it to plummet to the ground.

The tow plane carried on and disappeared into the distance.I think we were in a searchlight belt and we had one about a mile and a half away and as a plane came towards us about twenty lights would come on,but there were no guns near us.I never saw a plane caught in the searchlights.I never had any cause to fear anything in the war,it was mainly excitment.

My brother was in the RAF but because of his bad eyesight he wasn't first grade so he was in Scotland as a mechanic on training planes.A bomb fell in the churchyard next to our house which didn't go off.(We often heard the diesel engines of the German planes as they went over,I think I knew just about every German plane by the noise it made and by its silouette.I even heard a Doodlebug go over.)

The bomb disposal unit came to look for it but it was never found,it went too deep in the peat.We had some evacuees stop in our house,a mother,three year old son and baby and they stayed in our spare room.They had "Cockney" accents but they didn't stay long,maybe a few months.

If it was a moonless night and cloudy,if you went outside it was pitch black,no light at all.

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