Enemy Rescue

It was during the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940, when a handful of RAF fighter pilots defeated the might of the German ‘Luftwaffe’ intent on paving the way for the invasion of Britain.

This incident occurred in the Essex village of Laindon where people living in the area had a ‘ringside seat’ of the famous battle. The skies overhead were daily filled with the vapour trails of aerial combat and the rattle of machine gun fire. Occasionally the battle would be brought home literally when some of the combating aircraft, mostly German, came crashing into the fields.

Now in Newcentury Road, Laindon, lived a lady of 69 years, my grandmother, Mrs Agnes Monk. On a day in early September, when the battle was at its height, she was at home in her bungalow all alone and getting on with her usual daily chores. This day was for her, however going to be different. Opposite her bungalow was a row of tall poplar trees. Into one of these came a German airman with parachute becoming entangled in its lower branches and apparently unable to extricate himself.

Across the road from Granny’s bungalow were living two or three women recently moved out of London and were seemingly bent on revenge. On hearing a lot of shouting, my grandmother went out to her front garden and saw a woman waving what she described as a meat cleaver and shouting “I’m going to carve his bleedin’ guts out”

In Granny’s own words as she told it to me. “Well he was only doing what he was told and I wasn’t going to stand by and see murder done so I ran across and shoved her away and told her perhaps he had a Mum worrying about him and she had no right even he was the enemy. I kept her off till the police come and took him away”

That was my Granny. Always believed in fair play. She died in 1955 aged 84 years and is buried in St Nicholas Churchyard, Laindon.
During the First World War, when her chimney-sweep husband was soldiering in France, she did his job. This is inscribed on her tombstone.

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