大象传媒

Born and bred in Chichester, I was 3 when WW2 broke out. So through all my formative years I knew only wartime (and postwar) conditions; for instance, rationing finally ended when I was 17, not long before I left home - to do 2 years' conscripted military service! Like many other Britons, I could have had no preconception of what a wartime existence would be like. Adults in 1939 might have built up some mental picture during the '30s of how war might be, but a young child could know nothing else.

An external observer might well think that, in the heart of the Sussex countryside, Chichester would have a quiet war. We and others took in evacuees, both children and adults, so the powers-that-be clearly thought so. Nonetheless, there were martial incidents and accidents, some of which are already reported on in this archive. Situated as we were between Tangmere (and other satellite or dummy airfields) to the east, and Portsmouth to the west, we were always going to be in someone's bombsight or firing-line, still more when D-Day preparations began. My one up-close-and-personal experience of war's violence turned out however to be from an unexpected quarter.

It was about 4 p.m on a sunny spring afternoon (of what I now know to be Thursday, 11 May 1944), as a group of 7/8-year-old schoolboys, me included, meandered its way from the Central Junior Boys' School towards homes in S.E.Chichester. Heading towards Velyn Avenue and the 'cinderpath', we had turned off The Hornet on to an unmade potholed road, with a laundry and timber yard on the right and a private school to the left. Some commotion, probably from those in front, caused me to look up in the sky and see my personal horizon filled with a vast black bird shape coming directly towards me out of the sun apparently at head-height and aiming itself at my feet. I turned tail, running as fast on the uneven track as my little legs could carry me, back to The Hornet and then home 400 yards or so away, minus one shoe. I must have heard ear-shattering noises, but it is the visual impact that has stayed with me. Once back home, my heartfelt grief was about the loss of my shoe - rationed wearing apparel of any kind had to be treasured - and I was only mollified by an evacuee teacher billeted with us going back (so she said) unsuccessfully to look for it.

Within a few days I became aware that it was an empty (i.e no aircrew) American bomber that had crashed into the laundry, killing and injuring several people (only one personally known to me that I can recall). The aircrew had all baled out safely over land near Chichester, and there were dark, jingoist mutterings about US fliers often abandoning their charges in this way, whereas our lads would never countenance it. There my memories would have remained had this archive not provoked me to do some research in back-numbers of the local paper. (Incidentally, I can thoroughly recommend this to get a truer flavour of how the small-town home front seemed to those engaged there, albeit filtered through the eyes and pens of what seem pretty po-faced journalists. It sounds rather 'normal' for much of the time).

The two most contemporaneous editions of the local weekly were surprisingly explicit in what they did report about that May afternoon, especially compared with coy references in other editions to the results of enemy bombing as being in 'a south-coast town', e.g when Armadale Road was bombed in 1943. (One would have thought that acknowledging in print the impact of 'friendly fire' would give just as much, if not more, comfort to the enemy). The reports' depictions of widespread damage and shrapnel flying enormous distances have brought home to me now what a near-death experience it was for me and my friends. One of the American airmen picked up near North Bersted told how, before aiming the plane out to sea and all baling out, they had tried to release their bombs in the sea, but 'the lever had jammed'.

So what hit the ground not more than 50 yards from me was not just a very large Liberator already in flames but also a matching large payload of bombs! No warning siren had sounded because enemy aircraft were not involved, so everyone was out and about, and the emergency services evidently took a while to swing into action, for the same reason. A lot of people and I were clearly very lucky, and I'm surprised (incredulous, to be honest) now to learn that the only immediate fatalities were a 14-year-old girl and a widow of 58, who were working in the laundry at the time. These reminiscences are dedicated to them.