大象传媒

WORLD WAR II MEMORIES

I lived at Cliffe. At dusk on Friday 23 October 1942 I was watching dozens of Stirlings (four engine bombers) going to attack targets in Northern Italy. It had become a regular sight. In the early hours of Saturday morning I was woken by the sound of a plane, very low, circling around the village. It must have been in trouble. After several circuits it went silent. The Stirling Bomber had crashed into a row of four cottages and a farmhouse at Rye Street and ended up in the field opposite. Nobody in the cottages or farmhouse were killed in the crash but a young woman who had recently given birth to a baby girl died of exposure before help could get to her. The crew of the Stirling were all killed. The reason that the Stirling crashed into the houses was that a searchlight crew half a mile away had been unable to make radio contact with the plane. They illuminated the houses for the pilot to see as there were open fields all around. The pilot, who was probably in a bad way, must have thought they were showing him a way down and flew down the beam. I went there that afternoon, it was a terrible sight, the ruined houses and the wreckage of the Stirling.

To think that a young woman who I had been talking to just a few hours earlier and nine young Canadian airmen died in such a tragic accident. Just one of many that happened during the war. The young woman鈥檚 husband and baby survived the crash.

By Geoffrey Martin

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