Sneaking out of church to watch the war
One Sunday, I slipped away from St Dunstan’s Church during the service and headed across the fields to where Uncle Alf was on duty at his Observer Corps post.
The air-raid siren started to wail just as I reached the sandbagged emplacement set near some low trees which acted as camouflage. These trees were home to many different types of birds. As the siren note rose and fell, the birds would warble and tweet in company. I loved the blackbirds’ song most of all, and in between checking out the horizon for enemy aircraft, I would spend time watching and listening to a pair of blackbirds who were nesting in a nearby oak.
As Uncle Alf watched towards the north, I scanned to the east, which was the most likely direction from which we could expect high flying bombers heading for London. It wasn’t long before the first sounds of massed aero engines reached our ears and there at 10,000 feet, we could see many formations of tiny silver dots. Alf’s eyesight was not that good and he handed me the binoculars.
White vapour trails were forming above the massed formations and a nearby anti aircraft gun hidden in Angley Woods opened up on the raiders.
The evenings of aircraft recognition training in the Ritz cinema paid off and I quickly identified 50 plus Heinkel 111 twin-engined bombers and 25 plus Dornier 17s, nicknamed Flying Pencils because of their slim shape. The vapour trails were from high-level escorting fighters, Messerschmitt 109s.
Alf was busy relaying this information to RAF Sector Headquarters when among Uncle Alf suddenly changed to a stern command of “Get down Johnny, my lad – and fast...NOW,” as he knocked the binoculars from my eyes and pushed me to the ground.
Despite his less-than-perfect eye sight, Alf had spotted a salvo of tumbling bombs from the stricken Dornier which had been forced to jettison its load. I got a quick look at these black objects falling in our general direction and for the first time I became truly frightened.
Thirty seconds later the bombs exploded all in a row in a field half a mile away. Among them were two delayed action monsters, which were later defused by some very brave soldiers of the bomb disposal squad.
The immediate drama over, Uncle Alf and I shared a thermos of tea brought by the redoubtable Aunt Annie, who ignoring the salvo of German bombs, had trudged up the hill a few minutes earlier.