|
 | |  | |
By the time you read this, you will probably have heard about the 2nd World War at school, wrote Roy Green in an interesting and informative letter to his granddaughter Hannah. It lasted from 1939 till 1945,and many people on both sides died during that time due to the fighting.
Living in Angmering, a small village then, the war by and large passed us by. Gunfire could be heard over Worthing and Shoreham, but the German bombers flew right over us en route to London. As far as I can remember, only three things really affected us in the countryside.
One was a doodlebug. That was a pilotless plane full of explosives. They often flew over us, and we could hear and see the flames from the engine. This is another sound that will always stay with me. The doodlebug had enough fuel in to get it to fly to London, and when that ran out it dropped with its deadly load on anything underneath.
The Government in their wisdom, let the Germans think that their bugs were over flying London, with the result that they (the Germans) put less fuel in, which meant they then fell short and into the countryside instead of built up areas.
My father and men his age who were in the First World War, were recruited to work in a sawmill about one mile from our house in a small place called Swillage. Australian soldiers also manned this sawmill and luckily when the doodlebug dropped on this sawmill it was nighttime and everyone except the night watchman was home in bed.
It made one hell of a bang, and as we were not used to bombs dropping on us, we were not in the shelters. I remember it gave everyone one hell of a fright.
A second incident was once again at night, when a German bomber was shot up, and being unable to reach London with its bombs, it decided to shed its load just as is was coming over the village. These dropped in Dappers lane, which is only just down the road from Water Lane.
I hope you never have to hear a bomb going off, it shook all the houses, broke windows but once again our luck was in and they fell into a field and not onto houses.
A third incident really brought home to me how serious the war was. Being a youngster I suppose the most horrible things were kept from us. This time I must have been about eight years old. As most of the village men were in the army, us school children were let off school to help harvest the local crops.
We were working in a field, once again in Dappers lane, bagging up potatoes, when a German fighter plane with smoke coming from its engine flew over us at treetop height and started to machine gun us. Luckily for us the farmer possibly expecting something like this could happen, had built a shelter in the field, made of thick baled straw.
He (his name was Mr Passmore) managed to get all of us into the shelter, but he didn't mange to get in the shelter himself, and the Gerry shot him in the leg. You can imagine the sheer terror experienced by us youngsters.
The German was being chased by two Spitfires, and they finally shot him down on Ham Manor Golf course, just south of the village.
We heard later that the German pilot was still alive when the plane crashed, but badly injured. Our local Home Guard surrounded the plane with their ONE and only rifle between them.
The Gerry wasn't going to give up and started shooting at them with a pistol. He was eventually captured and, mortally wounded, died soon after. He is buried in the churchyard of St Wilfred's Catholic Church in Arundel Road Angmering.
It was quite funny locally, the Home Guard, which really was like those in Dads' Army, mounted a guard on the German fighter plane to stop souvenir hunters. Overnight a local man known as Ginger Wilcox, who lived near Ham Manor, sawed off the part of the wing with the markings on, and hid it away. I can imagine the surprise of the Mr Mannerings of the Home Guard when they found it missing in the morning.
The local Home Guard, although prepared to fight if there was an invasion, only had, as mentioned, one Lee Henfield .33 rifle, and only 5 rounds of ammunition. It wasn't till much later in the war that they had guns and uniforms. If Hitler had known what he would have been up against, he could have walked in along the East Preston coast without a shot being fired.
There was however one very brave Home Guard. Near the end on the war, they were on Highdown Hill practicing how to throw hand grenades. One old boy pulled the pin out of a granade, but promptly dropped it.
This man, to save his mates who were all around, threw himself onto the grenade and was promptly blown up. I don't remember his name, and I am trying to find this out for the records.
A word here on air raid shelters. Every house was given this huge steel shelter known as a Morrison shelter, named after the Minister who devised them. This was an indoor shelter, and not to be confused with the outdoor shelter known as an Anderson shelter. The only room in our Water Lane houses large enough to build this shelter, was the front room. I suppose it took up almost half of the room.
No one really used these shelters until the night described above when the bombs fell. Then they were in constant use. I hated sleeping in them, as they were only about 2 1/2 feet high.
So I used to sleep under the stairs, which was deemed to be another safe area if we were bombed. This wasn't much better, as there were spiders under there, and you know I can't stand SPIDERS. My Mum would go in with a candle to sort them out before I would go to bed.
I remember the air fights known as The Battle Of Britain. The Germans sent a fighter plane force over to try and blow our fighters out of the skies. An almighty air fight happened right over our heads.
I remember lying on our front lawn looking up and watching what was going on above us. With hindsight this was a damned silly thing to do, but my parents were out watching, as were all the people from the houses in our road.
Our Airmen gave the Germans a bloody nose, and we are told that if they had lost this battle we would probably have lost the war.
| |  | |  |
To add a comment you must first login or join for free, up in the top left corner.
|
|
