大象传媒

About 9 of us used to hang around in a gang we were all about 12/13 yrs old. You can imagine the fun we used to have at that age in the war- we had loads of freedom. We had been down to the dump and built ourselves some bikes and we went off for hour on end exploring.

One day a mate of mine whistled at the back of my house. When I went out to him he told me he had found a German plane! We rounded up the others and cycled out there as fast as we could. And there it was, no wings, it had come down in the trees and the wings had been torn off. No one else seemed to know it was there! It was a Dornia 109. There was no blood and no soldiers, no uniforms or parachutes. But what we did find was some guns and lots of ammo! We had a hell of a time playing in that plane! We pretended we were pilots and all took turns flying it. We found lots of treasures as well. We all went home with something! We found German money and I found a bronze cross on a blue ribbon. We all took a bit of ammo as well. On the way home we thought we should tell the police as it was certain they didn't know it was there! The policeman didn't believe us at first then when I started to describe the plane in detail he started to take more notice!

Of course we didn't tell him what we had in our pockets! After a while we decided to see what the ammo could do. My dad had shown me ammo before and so I put it in a vice in our garage. I got a 2LB lump hammer and a 4inch centre punch and told the others to stand back. I hit it and there was a mighty bang. The garage was full of smoke and there was a small hole in the garage wall. We followed the hole which went through 4 sheds! I think we got off pretty lightly, we could have all been killed. God knows what would have happened if I had hit the other end! Looking back we were a bit silly but when your that age, well you don't think of anything bad happening do you?!

I research the background of the cross I found in the plane. It was a bronze medal given to German mothers who had given the Furer 3/4 children. I never did find out how it came to be in that plane. Maybe the mother of one of the pilots had given it to her son for luck. I never found out what happened to the pilots either.

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Jacci Phillips of the CSV Action Desk at 大象传媒 Hereford and Worcester on behalf of Albert George Smith and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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