大象传媒

My father was ten years old in 1939 and lived in the village of Codicote, approximately 30 miles north of London. Many times he has told us stories of life there during the war years and I am writing this so that these recollections are not lost. I am sorry they are so brief and are not "first hand", but hopefully they are still worthwhile writing down as evidence of oral history passed down within families.

In particular, he remembers watching the glow as London burnt during the Blitz, he remembers D-Day for the endless air traffic flying over the village towards France and he remembers a V-rocket that missed London being visible as it came down in local fields. In fact he and friends got a rollicking for standing outside and watching the V-rocket, instead of running for cover.

He also remembers going to search for shrapnel when a German plane crash landed nearby.

There was also a fighter pilot from the village who, when returning to base after combat, would fly at low level, very low level by all accounts, up the High Street at anytime of day, to let his Mum know he was alright. As you can imagine, the sight of the fighter plane skimming the roof tops caused great excitement amongst the young boys who saw it. This pilot survived the War, but was later killed in a car accident.

The De Havilland factory was at Hatfield and one of the De Havilland family use to drink in one of the village pubs. He would flight test various aircraft produced by the factory. On one occasion the area to the rear of the pub was being used by the locals for air raid practice. In the middle of the practice they were buzzed by an aircraft, chaos ensued as everyone ran for cover. That evening Mr De Havilland entered the pub with a smile on his face and enquired how the air raid practice had gone that day.

After the War my father did National Service and ended up in Germany for some of that time. He was there during the Berlin Airlift. He remembers watching officers hunting wild boar and driving trucks under the trapeze of a travelling Circus that set itself up beside a road near to the army base. The acrobats would practice walking the high-wire above the road.

I hope this is a reasonable contribution to what I think is a very worthwhile project. A great component of History is people's participation in it.

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