Bomb memories

Regarding the Monimail bomb, Archie Goodall has been in touch with some information.

“I remember the night the bomb fell. When the siren sounded we used to sit in a passage in our Pathcondie farm house as our air raid warden had advised.

“The night of the bombing my father and our oldest evacuee had gone outside to listen to the aeroplanes. On hearing the whistling sound of the falling bomb they rushed back inside – the bang was terrific! Next day we went to see the crater at Melville but were not allowed close to it.

“Soldiers were stationed at Melville with no anti-aircraft guns but with searchlights, which we thought were to attract planes away from Leuchars.

“The young soldiers had no weapons but borrowed my father’s .22 rifle to shoot rabbit – having being shown how to use it.

“The village of Letham was also bombed with incendaries that same night but no damage was done.”

Archibald A. Lawrie adds: “As a Fifer born and bred, I do not know about the bomb in the field as described in The Courier of February 17 but I do know about another definite site. That lies about half a mile west of Windygates on the road to Glenrothes. The scar used to be seen on the north side of the road about 200 yards up the slope into the field but continual ploughing has obliterated it now.

“As a young child I was in our air raid shelter that night and I remember our father going out and then returning to tell us that he heard a German plane go over (their engine sounds were very different!) and that there had been the ‘thud of a bomb landing somewhere’. The actual site was pointed out to me a considerable time later.

“At the end of the war we heard that the German pilot responsible had actually been a student at Edinburgh University in 1938 and his bombing mission was to destroy the Forth Bridge. The story goes that he could not bear to destroy the structure that he had known previously and so “dumped his bombs” on farmland in Fife. I do not know if that story is true.”