Torbay was generally regarded as a safe place during the war, but there were some incidents, several of which caused loss of life. I was about 10 years old, in 1943 or so, when this incident happened, which I have written as a poem. I hope that is OK.
devonclem
"Memories of War
While bombs were falling,
sirens wailing,
people running, screaming,
in distant parts of the country,
Pete, Mike and Matthew
my best friends, and I
were playing in the woods.
We slid down banks,
created muddy battle scenes
in the slow-moving stream,
trampled bluebells underfoot
to imitate the terror of the war,
shouted defiance
at enemy fighter planes
from behind bushes.
But once we were caught
in the street, exposed.
At the point where the climbing road
reached the summit
and plunged into the valley,
we kicked a ball
over a hedge,
and laughing, uncertain what to do,
we met in the middle of the street.
A black spot in the sky
suddenly became
an aircraft.
It roared across the valley,
turned along our street,
thundered overhead,
ignoring us, but
aiming cannon fire at
a gasholder close by.
Caught up in hideous excitement,
we forgot to dive or duck,
but simply watched open-mouthed.
We saw the cannon shells hit the target.
Should it have exploded
in an enormous fountain
of flame and smoke,
- a marvellous display
of destruction?
Something small,
hardly visible on the top,
caught fire, and some flames played.
We saw a group of fire-fighters,
as tiny as toy soldiers,
throwing buckets of sand
to douse the fire.
Later, we heard -
the fighter had been brought down
as it passed over the coast
by a machine gunner,
firing from the hip.
In the end,
nothing much happened.
The pilot did not aim
at the group of small boys
playing in the street;
the gasholder was not destroyed,
there was no great catastrophe.
The pilot, like Icarus in the picture,
was hardly noticed
as he plunged, mortally, into the sea."
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