Picturethat!
THE Doodlebugs poem (peterborough) reminded me of being a 16-year-old, living with my parents in a home in Beckenham, Kent, which backed onto the then playing field of the evening Standard sports ground.
We had suffered a lot from air raids and lost the windows in the house on several occasions, but the eerie sound and then the silence on this night in 1944 was before anyone had experienced V-1 flying pilotless bombs.
An explosion followed, blowing out the temporary sisal paper covers on the broken windows, but we were safe!
The following day, I went into the field (along with friends) and we discovered this enor- mous crater with scattered pieces of German language-marked debris. We all gathered what we could as souvenirs. Suddenly the area was surrounded by military troops who had come to collect (and analyse) the remains of this new Hitler weapon — only to find it gone!
A house- to- house search ensued, and we boys were forced to hand it all over.
We did not know then that there would be many more to follow, plus the even more terrifying V-2 Rocket. Luckily, my family survived the war.
Keith Stoneman, Southsea, hants.