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This story was submitted to the People’s War website by Doreen Bennett on behalf of Barry Hewett the author and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

WAR TIME MEMORIES (Circa 1941)

I was born at 3 Pengelly Road Delabole almost next to the Delabole Quarry where my father worked. I remember one day standing outside the back of our cottage, my mother was talking to our next door neighbour. All at once out of the blue we saw this big aircraft pass by at the foot of our garden, I saw three men sitting up in the front; one in a gun turret halfway back, with a German cross halfway back on its fuselage and a swastika on its tail. They could have shot us with no trouble at all. The plane was no more than 20 feet or so off the ground and just about 40 feet away from us. I think it was a Heinkle bomber, it also had twin engines. I distinctly remember its low flight past us.

Next door but one to us was a very big house where Mr Satchel and his family lived. He was the manager of the quarry. Anyway, the plane flew on past the house and out of sight. Afterwards local people said that perhaps the Germans thought that the quarry pit and the buildings were something to do with the Admiralty. The pit was about 800 ft deep and a mile and a quarter in circumference at that time. I think I must have been five or six at that time. A Mr Sidney Smith, a local preacher who lived in the High Street at Everest House was said to have had in his possession some German photographs relating to the above after the war.

We had a bomb dropped close to our house. It fell on a house just behind the Pengelly Chapel and Sunday School. I remember the blast cracked my mother’s mirror which was on the dressing-table in the bedroom. The bomb cut the house in half; it was rebuilt back like that and is still standing. Later we moved to 3 Trebarwith Road Rockhead at the other end of the village. When Plymouth was being bombed we could quite clearly see the searchlights and the night sky was red. When we heard the bombers coming, mother would get us to go into the cupboard under the stairs until she thought it was safe to come out again.

I also remember going down to the railway station to meet and greet the evacuees off the train. Although we were not able to house any, we were asked by our teachers to go and meet them anyway. The children all had labels with there names on and all had gas masks. Also later on I remember walking along the high street with my mother and coming towards us was Mrs Gettings, my Uncle George’s mother. She had in her hand a telegram from the War Department saying that George was missing presumed killed. He was married to my Auntie Eileen. She was in the Women’s Royal Army Corps and was stationed on the East Coast with a gun battery.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, my uncle was on board a Halifax bomber and on one of their missions back they were shot down over Rouen in Northern France. He parachuted into a cornfield and there he slept in his parachute until he was found by the French Resistance. They kept him on a farm until the end of the war when he was repatriated home. His daughter is named Chantelle after the farmer’s daughter. Uncle George and my Aunt are still alive and living in an old people’s home in Wadebridge.

Two other items of interest. The Great Train robber went to school at Delabole namely “Ronald Biggs “. He was looked after by Mrs Thomas who had a shop at Medrose. This was also during the war years. Mrs Thomas has died long since.

Also during the war there was a naval camp at Treligga a small village on the coast about two miles from Delabole. I knew a chap who was stationed there during this time. An American bomber crash-landed there. Later it was stripped down to its bare parts to enable it to make a take-off. It did and the whole story is most likely still available together with photographs which I have seen.

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