大象传媒

I was a schoolboy living in Folkestone and on a day when not in school, friends and I were on our bicycles riding around.

We saw a Lysander aircraft, a high wing monoplane used for aerial reconnaissance, and later for landing agents in France, which was practising evasion tactics with a Hurricane fighter. At a critical moment the Hurricane banked sharply, stalled and plunged into the ground.

We cycled quickly to the open ground where the fighter had fallen. Very shortly afterwards a sports car arrived with clearly the Lysander pilot as driver. His distress at the death of his colleague was awful and we cycled away. This was my first experience of death and the terrible toll of war.

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