大象传媒

I was lying in my pram outside our house in Osmaston Road, Derby. It must have been some time in late 1941, or possibly early 1942. It was daylight. Suddenly, low overhead and very noisy, flew an aircraft with one of its engines ablaze. I also have a child-like memory of its underneath doors being open, as it was so close to me. It had woken me up from my morning (?) nap, and caused me to cry from the shock it created. I apparently went almost straight back to sleep, but was not able to discuss what had happened as I did not yet have the language yet to describe what I had seen. Many years later, on a visit to Derby, I chanced upon some old friends of my mother, a local GP, and the subject came up. These friends went away to fetch a scrapbook. Therein, to my pleasureable surprise, they had cuttings that confirmed my memories of all those years ago. A Junkers bomber had shed its bomb load elsewhere in the Derby area; possibly Rolls Royce or the British Rail Engineering Works. It had ben hit by defensive fire, also causing an engine to burn furiously. It landed in a lake about 1/2 mile from our house. I also have the dubious pleasure of having been born on the same day that the only German to have escaped captivity in the UK made his escape - 18 April 1941. Franz Von Werra apparently escaped to Canada and his story was made into a film - "The one that got away", starring Hardy Kruger. I saw the film when it first came out, and it has been on TV many times,

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