大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Jeffrey Calvert, a volunteer from Three Counties Action, at the John Lewis Headquarters, Stevenage on 24 August 2005 on behalf of Walter Crouch and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Crouch fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was 9 when war broke out.

We lived in Ticehurst, a small village on the Kent/Surrey border, 17 miles from Hastings and 10 miles from Tunbridge Wells. We were close to Beacon Hill, so I was able to watch the dogfights of spitfires and hurricanes.

It was a four mile walk to school. Because of a shortage of teachers, sometimes school might only start in the afternoon, or end at lunchtime.

One day, whilst at school, they thought that a bomb had hit our house, so a teacher drove me back home. In fact the bomb had landed in a nearby wood. The house was still standing when I arrived and my mum was surprised to see me as knew nothing about it. The teacher, having dropped my off, had driven away, so I did not go back to school that day.

I do remember one day sitting down to dinner at 12 o鈥檆lock and hear the flying fortresses come over. Three hours later they returned, some with tails hanging off, just managing to get back.

One day a spitfire came down in the next road. All the kids, including me, rushed to the site. The pilot, who had bailed out, went round apologizing, saying that he had tried to crash land into a filed. I remember all the people telling him not to apologize.

My father, William Crouch, worked on a farm and was in the home guard.

I spent a lot of time with my father on the farm. I recall one day the ack-ack guns stationed nearby swinging round and, aiming too low at the overhead threat, blowing the roof off the cowshed. On another occasion, when enemy planes appeared, my father picked me up and hurled me into a ditch filled with hay.

I do remember one of the farmhands, Fred Highland. We called him 鈥�20 to 1鈥� because of the position of his feet when he walked. Anyway, at 5:20 each morning he would go off to milk the cows. When the first doodlebug came over early one morning we asked him what it looked like. 鈥淟ike a bloody great rook with its tail alight!鈥�

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