From: Sinclair Hart (slobak@bcn.net)
Date: Sun Feb 21 1999 - 12:03:05 PST
To Mr. Arthur Pay: Thank you for your story of the flying bomb in Eastbourne. In 1944 I was in the piano department of Selfridges on Oxford Street one afternoon. That evening that whole end of the store was hit by a V2 I think it was. Glad we both escaped! Arthur Pay wrote: > Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1999 15:42:38 +0000 (GMT) > From: Arthur Pay <arthur@arthurpay.demon.co.uk> > Subject: Re: Life of evacuees in World War II > To: "tom.holloway@u3a.org.uk" <tom.holloway@u3a.org.uk> > > On Sun 21 Feb, Tom Holloway wrote: > > . > > Peter Oviatt at Theodore Roosevelt Elementary asked..... > > > > > evacuees. Would you mind asking your panel of elders > > to answer the > following questions? Thank you. > > Dear Peter, > > I wasn't an evacuee, but one of the awkward squad that refused to play > soldiers, > > A brief account of my own War experiences is told on website > > http://www.rmplc.co.uk/eduweb/sites/chatback/arthurp/arthurp.txt > > However, it was necessary occasionally for me to demonstrate to myself, and > to other people that it wasn't cowardice that motivated my stand against the > war, and I got up to many daft and foolhardy tricks just to prove it. > > Tom Holloway suggested that very little reference is made to the V1 or > doodlebug attacks which were made against SE England during the invasion > period 1944, and thought you might be interested in a quite close encounter > with one when I was posted at Eastbourne, which is a seaside town on the > southcoast, some thirty miles from occupied France. > > Their target was London, but they came across the coast quite low, > presumably because they were laden with fuel supplies, to get them to their > target, and also because they hadn't been launched far enough away to have > gained much height. > > I don't know if you have heard of V1's but they were essentially a > twothousand pound bomb, with wings attached, and a ramjet engine at the > rear, with a very distinctive noise, which were pointed at London, and > launched from mobile launching pads in Northern France. They were > completely indiscriminate and came down and exploded when they ran out of > fuel,or were shot down by Spitfires or Hurricane fighter planes and because > they mostly landed softly like paper dart, they caused tremendous lateral > damage when they exploded. > > Anyway, I was on leave in Eastbourne with my wife Charlotte, who was a > nurse, and shared my views about the War, and was on leave from her hospital > in London. Incidently, despite all the Security for the Invasion, she > travelled by rail, without any Identification Papers, unchallenged. > > We decided to go for a walk along the front to the path leading to Beachy > Head, when there was an Air raid Alert and also the Local immediate danger > alert, whilst we were on the path halfway up, and a Flying bomb zoomed in > from the sea. It was so close I felt that I could have scratched it belly > with a clothes prop. To add to our discomforture, some soldiers opened up > on it from the top of Beachy head. apparently with some success because it > veered to the left and landed in Eastbourne Town. > > I remember that the Sergeant was very concerned because he felt that had he > not fired at the thing it wouldn't have come down in the Town. He needn't > have worried because the only casualty on this occasion was a dead man who > was awaiting burial > > I recently had a visit from a young German student, and whilst showing her > around our neighborhood in Leyton I pointed out the various bombsites > where they have been replaced by new houses and flats, and was somewhat > disconcerted when she told me that her own town of Borken was 80 per cent > destroyed in two weeks, by British and American Air raids in 1945 > > . > > -- Arthur Pay