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This story has been submitted to the People’s War site by a volunteer from CSV Berkshire on behalf of Douglas Barton and has been added to the site with his permission. Douglas Barton fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Although very young, I was six year’s old in 1944, I well remember seeing and hearing the distinct sound of the V1 flying bombs or doodlebugs as we called them. My mother and I had returned from unofficial evacuation in the Midlands to our home in Caterham Surrey.
The flying bombs were destined for London but many fell short of their target exploding in the North East Surrey area including Croydon, which received more than it’s fair share.
Occasionally my mother would take me on a shopping trip to Croydon. This meant a forty-minute trip on a green double decker bus, a journey I would hate due to the chronic travel sickness I would suffer on the buses at the time. The highlight of one of these trips, probably in late 1944, was the sight of a V1 bomb on show in ‘Kennard’s’, a large and well known departmental store. This V1 bomb had come down surprisingly intact and without detonating somewhere locally. It was made safe, patched up and put on show for all to see close up. Although only six years old at the time, I remember the occasion clearly.
Many years later, in the summer of 2001, whilst motoring through France with my wife, we stayed overnight at a B&B a few miles inland from Dieppe. Nearby in a small wooded area was a flying bomb launching site one could visit. The concrete buildings were still standing. There were designed to be anti magnetic so as not to affect the guidance mechanisms of the bombs. I was amazed to see a flying bomb poised for take-off on the long launching ramp. Although the ramp was the original apparatus the flying bomb itself was a full seize replica.
Seeing the flying bomb brought back memories of my childhood and the occasion of the trip to Croydon where, as described, my mother and I saw the one on display all those years ago.

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