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Don McDouall was evacuated from London during World War II when he was five years old. He was sent to the small country village of East Hanney to live with Grans and Grampy at a house called Tamarisk. He now lives in Australia.
About the winter of 1941 things weren't too good around the village. The local village folk had quite a number of scares. The 'Jerries' had been unloading a fair few bombs in the area around the surrounding villages for quite sometime. Trying to hit the aerodrome. This aerodrome was situated near the village of Grove.
Perhaps they were overshooting London, which was sixty-five miles away. 'Confusing Hanney villages with Bristol' I heard Grans say in a muffled whispery voice to Mrs Monk over the garden wall. But what ever the reason there was for a certain amount of discomfort with the ever increasing near misses in and around the villages.
One cold morning there was one almighty thud. This was about five O'clock in the morning. The bed that Roy and I were fast asleep in went up in the air and then crashed back down again, causing us two kids to get to be pretty frightened! Roy said it was probably the end of the world!
All the crockery fell off the dresser in the kitchen. This made Grans pretty angry, so she gave both of us a few verbal cuffs as we picked up the broken cups, saucers and plates and to make matters a lot worse the Grandfather clock that stood at the bottom of the stairs fell face down in the passage-way. It never worked again to my knowledge and for always afterwards told the same time.
Evidently all this mayhem was caused by the impact of a large bomb detonating. The bomb had landed very close to the village. It was most likely a landmine. Landmines had the nasty habit of going off at a later time. This was usually when everybody had got over the original air raid and returned to their homes!
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