World War II part 2
By June/July 1940 the phase of the war that came to be known as The Battle of Britain commenced, with increasingly heavy daylight air attacks on our airfields in the south-east of England and later on London. Despite being heavily outnumbered the Royal Air Force Hurricane and Spitfire pilots fought magnificently. The German losses were so great that by the end of October they were forced to give up their mass daylight attacks and switch to the cover of darkness.
In the village we saw little of the main action but we eagerly followed the progress of the battle from wireless and newspaper reports. At last we had some good news and each day people discussed the number of 'planes shot down, like cricket scores during a test match. We had little real appreciation of the drama and violent loss of life going on in the skies further south but we sensed this was a major turning point in the war, after which the threat of invasion had greatly receded.
During this period a few individual daylight raiders attacked the airfield on the heath and on the afternoon of 21st August a stick of bombs dropped on Major Dawson's farm at Crockford's while the men were harvesting the barley. Gordon Coote, then a twelve year old schoolboy, was watching on the field and remembers the men had just stopped for a break when the Dornier came over. Gordon's dad said he could see things dropping from it. "They're bombs Coote," the Major urgently shouted, "Get down!" Luckily the bombs fell on the stubble and the men escaped injury.
Autumn 1940 marked the commencement of the heavy night-raids on London and other industrial towns and cities. We found ourselves in the flight path of waves of bombers heading for the Midlands. I vividly remember lying in bed, cuddling the lukewarm stone hot-water bottle and listening to the rhythmic throbbing hum of German Heinkels high above, silently praying that the hands of the bomb-aimers were not on their release levers. On the night that the Luftwaffe devastated the city of Coventry the droning went on until the early hours. When looking to the south-west at night we could sometimes see an ominous red glow in the sky from the terrible fires in London, nearly sixty miles away. Quite often the 'crump' of bombs could be heard falling somewhere. The pheasants roosting in the surrounding woods could sense distant explosions and set up a loud chorus of 'crocking' in alarm, giving early warning of approaching 'planes.
In the village we saw little of the main action but we eagerly followed the progress of the battle from wireless and newspaper reports. At last we had some good news and each day people discussed the number of 'planes shot down, like cricket scores during a test match. We had little real appreciation of the drama and violent loss of life going on in the skies further south but we sensed this was a major turning point in the war, after which the threat of invasion had greatly receded.
During this period a few individual daylight raiders attacked the airfield on the heath and on the afternoon of 21st August a stick of bombs dropped on Major Dawson's farm at Crockford's while the men were harvesting the barley. Gordon Coote, then a twelve year old schoolboy, was watching on the field and remembers the men had just stopped for a break when the Dornier came over. Gordon's dad said he could see things dropping from it. "They're bombs Coote," the Major urgently shouted, "Get down!" Luckily the bombs fell on the stubble and the men escaped injury.
Autumn 1940 marked the commencement of the heavy night-raids on London and other industrial towns and cities. We found ourselves in the flight path of waves of bombers heading for the Midlands. I vividly remember lying in bed, cuddling the lukewarm stone hot-water bottle and listening to the rhythmic throbbing hum of German Heinkels high above, silently praying that the hands of the bomb-aimers were not on their release levers. On the night that the Luftwaffe devastated the city of Coventry the droning went on until the early hours. When looking to the south-west at night we could sometimes see an ominous red glow in the sky from the terrible fires in London, nearly sixty miles away. Quite often the 'crump' of bombs could be heard falling somewhere. The pheasants roosting in the surrounding woods could sense distant explosions and set up a loud chorus of 'crocking' in alarm, giving early warning of approaching 'planes.
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During the early months of 1941, under cover of low cloud, lone German raiders increased their sneak raids into East Anglia during daylight, looking for targets to bomb or shoot-up. They weren't too choosy, even machine-gunning ploughman Charlie Barker working his horses in a field near Quy, a few villages away.
One cold dull Saturday morning early in 1941 I had just arrived at Newmarket on my cycle when a Dornier 17 bomber sped over low, heading for the airfield on the heath. The rattle and flashes from its machine-guns made it seem a very personal attack. On the 30th January 1941, while waiting in the train due to leave Cambridge station at ten-past four on a murky afternoon, a series of explosions rapidly grew louder. A low flying Dornier had followed the railway line in from the north and it raced past at less than 500 feet, almost overhead. Luckily for me and many others returning after an ordinary day at school, the stick of bombs landed in the railway sidings near Mill Road bridge, a few hundred yards away. It gave you a strange feeling to know that people up there could kill you without ever being tried for murder, even if caught. Such is war! |
Tuesday February 18th 1941 went down as a black day in Newmarket's history. On the afternoon of market-day a single Dornier 17 bomber came in low from the east and released a stick of bombs along the length of the crowded High Street. In a few seconds it had passed, leaving many dead and injured and heavy damage. After its deadly run the Dornier banked to the south over Camois Hall Farm, where alarmed workers had heard the rapid succession of ten explosions and machine-gun fire. Farmer Long showed his contempt by continuing to plough with his tractor, others threw themselves behind what cover they could find as the Dornier, its black crosses clearly showing, climbed away to escape in the clouds. News restrictions prevented the wireless or newspapers identifying the town but word of the tragedy rapidly spread. Everyone knew someone involved.
Although at school when the raid took place I cycled to the town on the following Saturday morning and found the High Street still in a terrible mess, littered with glass and rubble. Great gaps had appeared on the north side of the street where well-known shops and buildings had stood, including the post office, the Marlborough Club and the White Hart Hotel. A steam ploughing engine brought in to pull down unsafe buildings wound in its cable which became bar-taut as the drum revolved. Shopkeepers and businesses were attempting to get back to some sort of normality but the town had a dazed feeling. Even today traces of the damage can be recognised by those who remember that fateful day.
Although at school when the raid took place I cycled to the town on the following Saturday morning and found the High Street still in a terrible mess, littered with glass and rubble. Great gaps had appeared on the north side of the street where well-known shops and buildings had stood, including the post office, the Marlborough Club and the White Hart Hotel. A steam ploughing engine brought in to pull down unsafe buildings wound in its cable which became bar-taut as the drum revolved. Shopkeepers and businesses were attempting to get back to some sort of normality but the town had a dazed feeling. Even today traces of the damage can be recognised by those who remember that fateful day.
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At night, excitement came when the wandering searchlight beams converged into a cone as one of them picked up an enemy 'plane and the others quickly locked onto the target. Glowing streams of tracer bullets high up in the darkness showed that one of our night-fighters had also found its quarry.
On 31st July 1942 a German Dornier 217 crashed at the top end of the Duchess Drive, among the trees at the edge of the road running by Cheveley Park. The crew had baled out and the Wood Ditton Home Guard was called in to help round them up. Charlie Woollard cycled to work at Saxon Hall with his rifle slung over his shoulder, prompting the question from Mrs Burling: "Whatever are you doing with that gun Charlie?" "I'm looking for Germans," came the reply. It was the nearest the platoon would come to meeting the enemy face to face. The village boys soon arrived at the scene in the hope of obtaining souvenirs - pieces of metal, machine-gun bullets or cases. Schoolgirl Joyce Burling had more luck than most of us and managed to talk one of the soldier guards into giving her a piece of the instrument panel, complete with instructions printed in German. The army soon removed the wreckage but for weeks afterwards the smell of glycol permeated the ground and puddles of water at the side of the road turned green. |
Dornier 217
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Sometimes we saw one of our bombers limping back from a raid, desperately trying to make a landing. During the late summer of 1941 a Stirling bomber, its two port engines on fire, passed nearly over Dullingham station as I left the train at a quarter-to-five one afternoon. The port wing broke off and seconds later a dull explosion and a pall of black smoke indicated where the stricken 'plane had crashed, near Four Mile Stable Farm, just over two miles to the north-west. When I reached the crash site only a crater in the field and smoking pieces of twisted or molten metal remained to be seen. Inquisitive spectators were turned back by the police and we realised that among the wreckage the remains of the young crew also lay buried.
February 1942 brought bad news from the Far-East. Our 'invincible garrison' of Singapore had fallen to the Japs with the capture of many men from the Cambridgeshire Regiment. For months afterwards families didn't know whether sons or husbands were still alive. Jack Scrivener and Harry Swann, two young men from the village, and Dennis Algar our milkman from Dullingham, were among those missing.
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The United States entered the war in December 1941 and by the second half of 1942 The Yanks (American servicemen) began arriving in East Anglia in large numbers, adding to the already large build-up of British and Allied uniformed personnel. Many more airfields were needed to accommodate thousands of the big American four-engined Flying Fortress and Liberator bombers. Although never officially admitted at the time, the evidence came with the heavy passage of lorries loaded with ballast moving eastwards along the A11 road through Newmarket, particularly noticeable owing to the scarcity of civilian traffic.
Apart from the occasional Jeep carrying servicemen visiting the pubs, we saw few United States personnel in the village, but they quickly made an impression in Newmarket, Bury and Cambridge. The local girls soon came to appreciate their good looks, well-cut uniforms and generous, direct natures. Unfortunately these characteristics didn't endear them to the British servicemen who felt at a distinct disadvantage with their relatively low pay and rough uniforms. Most welcomed the invasion by the Yanks and we instinctively knew that we couldn't lose the war now that the United States had come in on our side. |
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Signs of our growing military strength came with the seemingly endless convoys of army vehicles passing through the village. Lorries, light tanks, Bren-gun carriers and motor cycle dispatch riders followed the muddy track down Old Boys' Lane and through Ditton Park, where they bivouacked in the woods. Sometimes Polish soldiers, who had formed their own regiment, manned the vehicles. We village boys found it exciting to watch and wave to the troops. I managed to pick up a word or two of Polish and used to delight the crews by calling "dobry" (good-day) or "dobranoc" (good-night).
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During the war years the radio took on special importance. Few villagers missed tuning in to the BBC Home Service at six o'clock in the evening to catch up with the latest news. The sober and reassuring voices of the news-readers, who announced their names at the beginning to prevent false news broadcasts by the Germans, exuded confidence. A new light entertainment programme, 'The Forces', aimed particularly at the serving men, brought a new liveliness to the BBC. Regular comedy shows - 'Variety Band-Box', 'Happidrome ' and Tommy Handley's 'ITMA' (It's that man again!) were great morale boosters. Catch-phrases from the shows became part of our everyday language.
By twiddling the knob we usually managed to pick up the nasal voice of 'Lord Haw-Haw' - William Joyce (the British subject turned traitor) broadcasting propaganda from 'Station DXB on the 31 metre band', introducing himself with "Jairmany calling". We treated him with a mixture of curiosity and ridicule but occasionally he demonstrated an apparent detailed local knowledge. Rumour spread that he correctly referred to Newmarket's Jubilee Tower clock being three minutes slow. Such stories enhanced the near phobia about German spies. |
By 1943 German air raids became less of a threat and at night we tended to turn over and go back to sleep when the siren wailed at Newmarket. People had also become complacent about carrying their gas-masks although children still had to take them to school. Individual raiders still caused alarm as they looked for airfields to attack, often following our bombers back from their night raids into Germany. Sometimes heavy thumps could be heard at night as a German crew took fright and dumped their bomb-load before heading for home. A particularly loud disturbance occurred just before midnight on the 3rd October, when four bombs fell about a mile to the south, near Widgham Wood.
Alarm quickly spread around the village after the first arrival from the sky of hundreds of silver foil strips, about ten inches long. Later on we learned about 'Window', the anti-radar screen dropped by bombers to confuse radar-equipped fighters. Another short-lived scare came one fine day with the appearance of thousands of gossamer threads floating in the air. We daren't touch them, fearing some diabolical German weapon, but they turned out to be a natural phenomenon - the migration of countless tiny air-borne spiders.
To my knowledge only two bombs fell in the parish, apart from the August 1940 incident at Crockford's previously mentioned, although a few more may have landed harmlessly in the woods or fields. One of them, a delayed-action device, penetrated several feet into the ground in a field to the east of Parsonage Farm just over a quarter of a mile south of the village school. Farm stockman Harry Byford, who had heard the whoosh and heavy thump in the night, thought the bomb had landed in his garden (as did several other people living nearby). In the morning Harry found the hole and looking down he could see what he referred to as "the handles" and he used a stick to measure its depth. He reported to special constable Jack Starling that the bomb must be harmless, as he couldn't hear it ticking. At about a quarter to two, as the children were returning to school after their dinner-break, it exploded, making a large crater. When we boys arrived to look for bomb splinters a strange metallic smell of TNT explosive lingered around the scene and a rumour spread that the shiny jagged pieces of metal could give you fatal blood-poisoning. During the war one got to know that smell and I can still recall it, although never having experienced it since.
A small bomb fell close to the brick cottage by the bridge over the railway line in Wood Ditton Road Newmarket, blowing out the doors and windows. Surprisingly, carpenter Frank Woollard, sent to repair the doors, found he could screw the hinges back using the original holes. The cottage still shows scars on its walls.
Sadly, some of the biggest explosions that shook the village houses and got us out of our beds resulted from our own bombers loaded with mines or bombs crashing on take-off from Newmarket Heath, after hitting the bank of the Devil's Ditch. During the late summer of 1943 excavators dug out a three-hundred yard gap in the bank, in line with the main runway (it's still there).
By the end of 1943 we were beginning to think that German bombing raids were a thing of the past, but a resurgence of enemy activity during the early months of 1944 had the sirens sounding again at night.
During the early hours of Friday, 2nd June 1944, four days before D-Day (the Allied invasion of France), a mighty explosion woke everyone in the village, although it happened nearly ten miles to the north of us. A train loaded with bombs was travelling south between Ely and Newmarket when the front wagon caught fire. Showing great courage the engine footplatemen uncoupled the burning truck from the rest of the train and they were attempting to shunt it to open country when it exploded with devastating results, just as they were passing through Soham station. Fireman James Nightall and signalman Frank Bridges died in the blast and driver Ben Gimbert and guard Herbert Clarke suffered serious injuries. But the brave actions of the railwaymen averted a far greater disaster.
Alarm quickly spread around the village after the first arrival from the sky of hundreds of silver foil strips, about ten inches long. Later on we learned about 'Window', the anti-radar screen dropped by bombers to confuse radar-equipped fighters. Another short-lived scare came one fine day with the appearance of thousands of gossamer threads floating in the air. We daren't touch them, fearing some diabolical German weapon, but they turned out to be a natural phenomenon - the migration of countless tiny air-borne spiders.
To my knowledge only two bombs fell in the parish, apart from the August 1940 incident at Crockford's previously mentioned, although a few more may have landed harmlessly in the woods or fields. One of them, a delayed-action device, penetrated several feet into the ground in a field to the east of Parsonage Farm just over a quarter of a mile south of the village school. Farm stockman Harry Byford, who had heard the whoosh and heavy thump in the night, thought the bomb had landed in his garden (as did several other people living nearby). In the morning Harry found the hole and looking down he could see what he referred to as "the handles" and he used a stick to measure its depth. He reported to special constable Jack Starling that the bomb must be harmless, as he couldn't hear it ticking. At about a quarter to two, as the children were returning to school after their dinner-break, it exploded, making a large crater. When we boys arrived to look for bomb splinters a strange metallic smell of TNT explosive lingered around the scene and a rumour spread that the shiny jagged pieces of metal could give you fatal blood-poisoning. During the war one got to know that smell and I can still recall it, although never having experienced it since.
A small bomb fell close to the brick cottage by the bridge over the railway line in Wood Ditton Road Newmarket, blowing out the doors and windows. Surprisingly, carpenter Frank Woollard, sent to repair the doors, found he could screw the hinges back using the original holes. The cottage still shows scars on its walls.
Sadly, some of the biggest explosions that shook the village houses and got us out of our beds resulted from our own bombers loaded with mines or bombs crashing on take-off from Newmarket Heath, after hitting the bank of the Devil's Ditch. During the late summer of 1943 excavators dug out a three-hundred yard gap in the bank, in line with the main runway (it's still there).
By the end of 1943 we were beginning to think that German bombing raids were a thing of the past, but a resurgence of enemy activity during the early months of 1944 had the sirens sounding again at night.
During the early hours of Friday, 2nd June 1944, four days before D-Day (the Allied invasion of France), a mighty explosion woke everyone in the village, although it happened nearly ten miles to the north of us. A train loaded with bombs was travelling south between Ely and Newmarket when the front wagon caught fire. Showing great courage the engine footplatemen uncoupled the burning truck from the rest of the train and they were attempting to shunt it to open country when it exploded with devastating results, just as they were passing through Soham station. Fireman James Nightall and signalman Frank Bridges died in the blast and driver Ben Gimbert and guard Herbert Clarke suffered serious injuries. But the brave actions of the railwaymen averted a far greater disaster.
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The last two years of the war saw a huge build-up in air activity as the Allied bombing campaign intensified. Seldom came a time when the drone of 'planes could not be heard, day or night, and it became apparent that Germany was taking far more punishment than they had given us, even during the height of the 1940-41 blitz.
Shortly after D-Day, while the Allied armies battled to gain a firm foothold in France, Germany launched the first of its secret V (vengeance) weapons against our country, the V-1 Flying Bomb. As 1944 progressed and our armies slowly fought their way towards the German homeland the 'doodle-bugs', as we came to know them, arrived at up to a hundred a day. Most fell on London and the south-east but one or two, launched from Holland or from aircraft over the North Sea, reached Cambridgeshire. Late on the afternoon of 24th September 1944 a V-1 sped over the north-eastern outskirts of Newmarket making a pulsating noise like a single cylinder motorbike. Those of us watching anxiously waited for it to pass out of range, praying that the engine wouldn't stop - a sure warning of imminent crashing and explosion. Thankfully, for us, it continued in a north-westerly direction towards the fenlands, flames spurting from its long jet-propulsion tube. Soon it had passed out of sight and hearing. Later we learned it had crashed near Burwell. |
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War-weariness had overtaken the village. Everyone was fed up with the anxieties, the rationing and general shortages. Beer, when you could get it, now cost a scandalous one shilling and thruppence a pint. Times were hard and we could see the war dragging on. Although it had become fairly obvious that the Allies would win, the question remained - when?
Very little had been heard from the two prisoners of the Japanese other than that they were still alive. Lobby (Ernie) Webb and Lew Reynolds, who had been captured by the Germans, fared better and were able to send brief messages to their families. My friends, the boys with whom I had grown up, were no longer boys but young men. Some had already joined the armed services and Stan Varney had been wounded in Italy. Others of my age were awaiting the call.
The government allowed some relaxation of the black-out regulations and in September 1944 the Home Guard stood down, although they kept their weapons for the time being.
Very little had been heard from the two prisoners of the Japanese other than that they were still alive. Lobby (Ernie) Webb and Lew Reynolds, who had been captured by the Germans, fared better and were able to send brief messages to their families. My friends, the boys with whom I had grown up, were no longer boys but young men. Some had already joined the armed services and Stan Varney had been wounded in Italy. Others of my age were awaiting the call.
The government allowed some relaxation of the black-out regulations and in September 1944 the Home Guard stood down, although they kept their weapons for the time being.
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But Germany had one more card to play and in September 1944 a sinister new age arrived with the V-2 rocket missiles that came without warning and against which we had no defence. Well over a thousand fell, mostly on London and Essex and the V-2 became the most feared weapon used against us.
Only one V-2 reached Cambridgeshire when on Friday afternoon, 10th November 1944, people in Newmarket and the surrounding villages heard and felt a heavy explosion. Ken Fordham, who was working at Six Mile Bottom, only four miles away from the impact, remembers the loud 'crump' followed by a rushing sound: "like an express train." Most of us assumed the noise was caused by a loaded bomber crashing, not an uncommon happening. The rocket, arriving at more than 2000 mph with its one ton warhead, made a wide crater in a field on the west side of Fleam Dyke, not far from the water pumping station. Mercifully, by early 1945, our advancing armies had overrun both the V-1 and V-2 launch sites. Had these weapons, particularly the rocket, been developed earlier in the war the possible consequences are frightening to contemplate. |