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This story was submitted to the People's War by Christine McDerment from Camberley Library and has been added to the website on behalf of Peter Lawford with his permission and he fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
"Once I remember seeing a plane shot down. We would watch the searchlights going on and this time I remember seeing a big bomber get caught in them. It got hit and came down in flames in a field nearby. Everyone in it was killed.
You couldn鈥檛 tell whose it was; we just assumed it was German. But afterwards I discovered it was one of ours! It was coming back home and got caught up in a German raid and got shot down.
I was about six or seven at the time, and I just went 鈥渉urray鈥� when it got hit, but it was one of our own!
I remember I was coming home from school one lunchtime. It was quite foggy at the time. And then out of the fog came this plane, down the High Street. London Colney was only one street really.
It was a German plane and the pilot waved at us and we waved back. I鈥檓 not sure who waved first. It was probably us boys, but he certainly waved back and it was all very cheery. We weren鈥檛 concerned at all.
He then went on and strafed the people coming out of the De Haviland airfield. My father told me afterwards.

On VE Day we had an enormous bonfire on the village green. All us boys gathered everything we could from the woods. Mr Cooper played the fiddlebox, the accordion, and his son played the fiddle. I remember we had a big celebration cake, with icing made from dried milk."

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