大象传媒

This story has been added to the site by Belinda, working with CSV Cornwall on behalf of Bill - the author - with his permission.
He fully understand the site's terms and conditions.

When I was about 14, I was working for Condecoi at Davidstowe airfield. My job was to camouflage the runways and also spray the inside of the hangars cream. The runways were wood chipped and then sprayed with a green substance to blend in with the grass verge. While I was working on a runway, a spitfire came in. He couldn't tell the difference between the runway and the grass verge, and with it being a bit soggy up there, he went onto the verge instead of the runway and tipped up on his nose in front of the control tower. He wasn't hurt though. It was a very, very busy aerodrome during the war. There were whole squardrons up there during the war. Polish squadrons of Wellington who used to do the coastal surveilance. Lancasters and American Fortresses were also there. They were very busy bombing at night. They'd go out at night and come back in the morning. Some didn't come back.
On D Day it was absolutely nose to tail with Fortreses all around the aerodrome, and they were were all geared up, nose to tail. I just knew something was up. I used to look at the planes and there were so many of them. They were taking of from about three o'clock in the morning continuously til about ten o'clock in the morning.

When I was younger, living near Camelford at Tregoodwell, one day we were out scrumping pears, and I had a shirt full of them. Then we heard the noise of a German plane. Then all of a sudden there was a few flashes and a bomb went off, and we just scattered. Pears went everywhere, we thought the end of the world had come! Didn't put me off scrumping though.

Last year, or the year before, a chap was up at Davidstowe Garage, and a German car pulled in to fill up with ptrol. The man started talking and he asked if that was the airfield over there. He was told it was. He said "I was sent to bomb that airfield, but I couldn't find it, so I droipped the bombs and went home". It was the same night!

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