Surviving a machine-gun attack

Surviving a machine-gun attack. Dorothy Parks (nee Beverley)

When I was 6 years old, my mother, two sisters, brother and I, lived with my Father, in the Army barracks at Portsmouth, and on the 1st or 2nd of September 1939, we were evacuated to Eastleigh, Hampshire.

We were taken by train to Eastleigh and then by coach to Bishopstoke infant school (St Mary’s I think), where we were allotted to the family who agreed to have us. I remember the big bar of chocolate they gave us along with other goodies. Over the war years I lived with a number of different people, before going back to live with my mum in a flat in Southampton Road, Eastleigh.

It was when I was living in Spring Lane, with a family, one of my stories happened.

One afternoon, I went with some friends to play in the park, we were having a great time. I was on the swings, going up very high (bit of a tomboy at that time) when it all happened.

There was a very big aeroplane coming our direction, it was tree-top high, we could see the airmen in it and they were laughing and waving to us, THEN, they started to machine-gun us, and as they went over they shot at us from the back. I jumped off the swing (don’t know how I wasn’t hurt as I was so high) and we all ran into the toilets. Funny now I think of it, the boys ran into the boy’s side, and girls into the girls! Amazingly none of us were hurt, all very frightened though.

We were told afterwards, that the plane continued into Eastleigh town, where they were shooting at people in the High Street.

That night, there was a very bad air-raid and they bombed the railway works and a lot of people were killed.

The plane was English that had been downed abroad, and the Germans fixed it and sent it back as a spy plane, as they did with others.

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