大象传媒

A lovely summer evening, the boys and girls playing on Norton Green with its duck pond for sailing our home made boats, the roller skates bikes and bags of glass marbles put aside as we concentrated on getting the boats to sail straight and not sink.
People walking round the Green, sitting on the seats and talking, a peacefull idyllic scene yet it was wartime.
Suddenly we all became aware of a steady humming sound, it got louder until it was a roar and there above us were Bomber planes masses of them flying in a wide arc. The roaring got louder as more groups of planes arrived overhead in blocks one above the other, they still flew in wide circles seeming to be centred on the green.
All playing had stopped, the boats forgotten as we stared at such a magnitude of four engined bombers by now deafening in their noise. One seemed to stagger and we could see smoke coming from an engine as it dropped out of line and turned back towards Goosepool Aerodrome (Middleton ST George or Teesside airport as it is now known)just a mile or two away.
The whole of North Yorkshire and South Durham were one large Airforce base with Aerodromes at Goosepool, Croft, Leeming Bar, Dalton, Topcliffe, Dishforth and others. Leeming Bar is still a RAF station and sent men to the two Gulf wars and the Balkens 60 odd years later.
I knew all the stations as my Father a Haulage contractor took runway making materials to them all, often with me riding shotgun, fighting Peter our dog for the window seat, he took umbrage when I tried to take over his private seat in dad's cab.
Goosepool were mainly Canadian's though we did know one or two Americans had crossed the border and joined the Canadian airforce to see the action. We had men from every part of the Empire up here, some of the men being Coloured all having exotic names on their shoulder flashes reminiscent of sunny climes in far off places.
The sky was now black with bombers blotting out the last rays of the sun and the noise overhead had reached a crescendo. Suddenly they started to straighten out and head for the coast, as the last engine sound died away all was quiet and tranquil once more. Time for bed collect your boats skates and marbles to head home for a cup of Ovaltine or if the food box had arrived from New Zealand a cup of Milo a wonderful drink plus a lard sandwich with plenty of salt on. (I have reached 74 does this put paid to all those food fad theories) I wonder.
Next day on the six-o-clock news we heard there had been a thousand bomber raid on Germany. Our brave boys had given the Hun hell showing them that bombing us night after night would only bring repercussions, and as an afterthought mentioned 20 of our aircraft failed to return.
We knew that was a lot of men missing or dead we also saw the planes limping back with engines out and damage that could be seen from the ground. I personally saw planes land badly shot up when I was on those aerodromes with dad. One came into a shelter near where we stood with no rear gun turret at all, it had been shot off over Germany. We saw the wounded being unloaded and the dead covered with a blanket. Also there were the planes that never made it in, the ones that crashed on the approach or the end of the runway, sometimes there would be hung bombs that exploded as they landed, those were classed as accidents and never went on the list of dead or missing announced by the 大象传媒 and we now know those figures were played down as well.
We had gone to bed after an Idyllic evenings play plus the spectacle of those masses of planes, not realising those men up there would be wondering what fate had in store, trying not to show fear and many never returning for their breakfast next morning.
War was all things to all people, to us children it was spectacle and wonder, to those involved, terror, boredom and the unknown, is it any wonder those boys came to town and let their hair down when they could, they deserved all the fun they could get as life for them was short.
Frank Mee Researcher 241911.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.