大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Terry Cleaver of 大象传媒 Kent and has been added to the website on behalf of Rose Fulcher with her permission and they fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was in my early twenties and was working for a publishing company who had a Government contract to publish classified telephone directories for England. We also had compiled a classified telephone directory for London and eventually the A to K and L to Z were published.
As the bombing of London had started, it was decided that the company would evacuate and eventually it evacuated to Walton-On-Thames.
During the very hot weather late in September, during what we now call the Battle of Britain, two friends and I decided that during our lunchtime we would cycle to the river for a swim. I borrowed a bike and took off to the town. I had never owned a bike but I managed to reach the river with my friends and sailed down a steep slope to the Towpath and proceeded along the side of the river towards a Bathing station about a quarter of a mile away. It was a lovely day, cloudless and bright sunshine and as we cycled along, we realised a Dog Fight was going on over Woking, over an engineering factory, Vickers I believe. We did not take a lot of notice at first as it was a distance away but suddenly a pilot of one of the German planes must have seen us cycling along the Towpath and swooped down on us. At this point luckily for us, we were passing short bushy trees and we all literally fell together beneath the trees with our bikes and landed in a bed of nettles. It was very nasty and frightening. The German lost sight of us and flew overhead. Needless to say we did not move away from the trees until we were sure he was well away. Had he seen us we knew he intended to gun us down.
By that time the Dog Fight was over and we sorted ourselves out and continued to the Bathing station. We enjoyed a cooling down in the river, which also soothed our nettle rash arms and legs.

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