大象传媒

Although the War was going badly for us in France it had little impact on us living in Pattiswick. Every Saturday we walked up the road from the Compasses pub to intercept my mate鈥檚 grandfather as we knew he would give us 6d. We then walked the 2陆 miles to the local sweet shop for a 3d ice cream each.

A very strange thing happened at school in early June 鈥� when we were waiting for our sports event to start one of the lads said that my singlet was covered in black spots so were all the others. When my mother washed it the spots would not come out. All the news at that time was of the evacuation from Dunkirk. What we didn鈥檛 know until after the War was that the black spots were caused by the burning oil tanks. The oily smoke was then blown by the prevailing wind over southern England.

Things began to hot up in midsummer with German attacks on shipping in the Channel and North Sea; this was the start of the Battle of Britain. It was in the summer holidays that we saw dogfights over the area. I didn鈥檛 see anything of the low level ones as my mother made me go with her into the cupboard under the stairs. I think it was more that she was scared stiff rather than thinking of my safety.

The big air battles I saw were very high up, so high in fact you couldn鈥檛 hear the planes only see the vapour trails they made. It was as if a modern day Madame Defarge had dropped her knitting which had tied itself into huge knots all over the skies as the opposing planes dived, twisted and turned. This was accompanied by the rattle of machine gun fire like demented drummers announcing another plane shot down.

The first crashed plane I saw was a Heinkel 111 which came down intact at Colne Engaine. Petrol was not rationed at that time so Dad took us alI his huge Essex Super Six to see the plane. Thirteen years later when I met Enid she told me that she was there as well and saw most of the crew being taken away as POWs. She still remembers one the of crew being carried away covered up on a stretcher and although she was only 10, thinking that he was some mother鈥檚 son as well as our enemy.

I remember a Messerschmitt 110 that crashed at Purley Farm. My mate Peter Clarke and I biked over as usual to get a piece of it but the guard ordered us away. Not daunted, we biked home and got a big bag of apples as a bribe. It worked and we got a piece each 鈥� a hardly damaged instrument panel and a twisted lump of aluminium. I grabbed the panel and my mate was left with the lump. I also got his fist in my eye 鈥� served me right!

As the dark nights came and the weather worsened German air activities increased. One night their planes were going over all night 鈥� this became known as the invasion scare. There must have been some justification because all the local Defence Volunteers (later known as the Home Guard) were called out. My Dad, as he had served in WW1, was Corporal of the Pattiswick platoon and ordered to man the checkpoint on the A120 by the football ground. One of the men, Bill Leadbetter was thought to be more dangerous to his own side so Dad took all his ammunition away from him all, 10 rounds of it! Orders were given that if anyone failed to stop or couldn鈥檛 give the right reply they were to be shot. After the War he told me that the challenge was 鈥淐romwell鈥� and the reply was 鈥淩abbits鈥�. This was later confirmed by Winston Churchill in Parliament.

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