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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Ben Russell from CSV Action Desk on behalf of Mr Kenneth Roy Hinton and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Hinton fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was serving on a spitfire in the RAF, 91 (Nigeria) Squadron, so called because Nigeria paid for all our planes. I was split between two bases, RAF Lympne and RAF Hawkins. We were a really good bunch, a mixed bag. Our squadron consisted of people from America, France, Australia and New Zealand.
Because we were on the coast we often had lots of bombing and the air field was always full of craters, most of which were filled in but were still soft. One day a pilot was coming in to land when his plane hit one of these craters and tipped up nose first. We were all watching and quickly ran out to see if he was ok only to find him laughing. He was perfectly ok and the plane didn’t have a scratch, he said ‘I always land like that, it saves the brakes’. When he said that we all started laughing!

We had plenty of good times but had bad times to. Capitaine Jean Maridor, a French 20 something, who was in our squadron, was on patrol over Kent when he spotted a flying bomb. He chased and caught it up, managing to hit it but only damaging it. Unfortunately the bomb was deflected and was now heading towards a hospital. He continued to follow the bomb and fired at it again. Because he was in much closer then he was supposed to be, when the bomb exploded it damaged his plane and he crashed and died.
He was a marvellous bloke and was supposed to be married just a few weeks later. He gave his life that day to save the life of others. He is now buried in France and every year the people of Kent hold a service for ‘the hero of Kent’ on the spot where he died.

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