----------- 1 -----------

It was the day on which my father had decided that our car had to be laid up for the rest of the war There is still some petrol in the tank’ he said ‘so we will go for one last ride before I put it away’. That afternoon we all got in and he took us via Tormarton to Marshfield and then back by way of Castle Coombe, a local beauty spot.

I doubt if we were away for as much as two hours. As we neared home we suddenly noticed a very large and ominous looking column of black smoke that clearly could not be far from our village. It could only be a crashed aircraft and it turned out to be only about half a mile from our house. Already, the police inspector from Chipping Sodbury was there, some R.A.F personnel, the Air Raid Warden and some Special Constables. They were all milling around but could do very little because the wreckage was burning fiercely and you could hear live ammunition exploding in the heat. No one dared go near because of the danger of being hit by stray machine-gun bullets and cannon shells.

The aircraft was a Beaufighter twin engined night fighter, designed and built by the Bristol Aeroplane Company. It carried a crew of two and was armed with four 20mm cannons and six 0.303 machine-guns. This particular machine, fully loaded with fuel and ammunition had taken off from R.A.F. Colerne, some seven miles away, only to get into immediate difficulties. The pilot ordered his navigator to bale out which he did successfully and then plunged to his death in the stricken aircraft. We saw the navigator who was in a bad state of shock and had a nasty bump on his forehead.

It started to get dark but the fire continued to burn unchecked. The field in which the crash had occurred was about two hundred yards off the road, approached by a rough farm track. Quite a lot of authorised people had collected along the track but none dared enter the field because ammunition continued to explode. At the police Station my mother was looking after things on her own. The Special Constables who should have been supporting her had all disappeared into the crowd, no doubt because they could not face handling the phone. At one stage an urgent message had to be delivered to one of the officials and she had to ask me to take it. I did not get beyond the gate at the entrance to the track before I was challenged and stopped. I was glad to leave because the exploding ammunition was quite frightening.

My mother was so incensed at having been left on her own with three children to man the police office that she complained direct to the Superintendent at the Police Headquarters in Staple Hill. The farmer who had headed up the Special Constables resigned.

Two or three weeks later, after everything had been cleared away, I went with some other lads to look at the crash site. We thought that maybe we might find some souvenirs, a piece of metal perhaps or a bullet case. The field had been ploughed and harrowed to drag up any remaining bits so we could find nothing. Then someone found a knobbly piece of bone about the size of a plum. I remember that it was quite white and did not look as though it had been in the ground for a long time. ‘That’s a bit of the pilot’ said one. There was an immediate hush. We all stood round looking at it. No one said a word. Then one of our number, braver than the rest, picked it up and threw it into what remained of the nearby hedge. After that we went on our way. I shall never know whether what we had been looking at was a bit of old animal bone or a fragment of the remains of a brave man.

------------ 2 ------------

There was a daylight raid, or rather we had received a red warning but nothing much was happening. Then we heard the sound of approaching aircraft, loud and obviously low flying. My father looked out of the window. ‘Look’ he shouted, and there approaching from our right at not much above treetop level was an enemy Heinkel He111 twin engined bomber, its port engine on fire and trailing a lot of black smoke. In close attendance behind it was a Spitfire. They were so low that you could easily see their markings and numbers. I am sure that somewhere I have seen a painting of an almost identical scene.

As they passed in front of our house there was a rattle of machine-gun fire as the Spitfire pilot pressed home his attack. Then they were gone. It all happened in a couple of minutes. There was little doubt as to where that Heinkel was heading, into the ground. We heard later that it crashed about fifteen miles away.

------------ 3 ------------

My father received an urgent message, originating from the Air Ministry, stating that they believed that one of our aircraft had crashed in his district during the previous hours of darkness. It was a De Havilland Mosquito twin engined fighter-bomber with a crew of two.

Nothing had been reported to us so my father immediately began to make enquiries of all the local farmers, also the Beaufort Estate because there were plenty of wooded areas where a wrecked aircraft might be concealed. All his enquiries came to nothing. It seemed very strange that no one had seen or heard anything, even though the crash had apparently occurred during the previous night. One would expect some considerable noise, possibly fire and usually wreckage strewn about.

In the end my father reported back that nothing could be found but the Air Ministry were adamant, they knew the route of the aircraft and last radio contact and they were certain that it was very near to us.

Then we received a phone call from one of the farmers saying that he had found the site of the crash. Along the road from Cross Hands to Tormarton there were a few fairly remote houses that stood back off the road. The aircraft had come down near one of these, so close in fact that it was almost touching the garden wall. It must have come down almost vertically because it was almost completely buried and such bits as remained above ground level were partly camouflaged against the background of the wall. My father went to the crash site and interviewed the occupants of the house who were absolutely adamant that they had not heard a thing. We all thought that quite incredible.

Finally the R.A.F. salvage crew came to undertake the horrific task of digging out the remains of the aircraft and its crew. We were told that the engines were eight feet below ground level.

------------ 4 ------------

I am not quite sure how it was that I was allowed to see the next event that I propose to tell you of because it involved looking through a window during a night raid but maybe it was because it had not been a particularly eventful night. My mother was upstairs in the bathroom looking out at the searchlights when suddenly she called out ‘There’s one caught in the searchlight’. I asked if I could see it and ran up the stairs to the bathroom. She did not tell me to go back.

The nearest searchlight to us was at Little Badminton and the aircraft was in its beam. I expected to see the aircraft fire tracer bullets down the beam, this being the usual practice. My father had seen this before and had told us about it. However that did not happen this time. Searchlights were sited so that each was in range of the next and as the aircraft continued towards Bristol the next searchlight came on and for a few moments the two formed a large inverted ‘V’ with the aircraft caught at its apex.

As the second searchlight took over anti-aircraft fire began and it was clear that their aim and range was good. Shell bursts appeared all around the enemy. Then one made a direct hit. My mother cheered. The second searchlight went out, as it was no longer needed, the aircraft was well on fire and could be seen clearly. It began to descend in a long arc towards Bristol and passed below the horizon, finally crashing some ten miles away near Winterbourne. In those final moments I wondered how the crew must have been feeling but there was no pity. They had come to destroy and to kill our people but now it was their turn to die.