A German Bomber on Dartmoor

Apart from a false air raid alarm on the first full day of war whenm at nearly 6 I was on the allotment with my father, even in Plymouth war didn't really seem to have affected us at home all that much, so we rented our usual bungalow on the moors in August 1940.

Going out for a walk one afternoon with my mother and aunt we heard the unwelcome noise of a plane, Although it is now 64 years ago I remember the scene like yesterday. No one else was around . The granite rocks towered above me and there, overhead, was what seemed like a huge plane, coming nearer and nearer, and eventually was no more than a couple of hundred feet above us. On each of the wings was a black cross and, staring out of the cockpit window, two white faces. We cowered beneaath the nearest rock and, even I at such a young age, was certain that death was imminent. It wasn't, of course, and the planes carried on to Sheepstor church and crashed near the graveyard. I believe the two pilots were buried in the churchyard.

Not many events since then have left me with such a vivid and indelible memory of the scene. We were to return to Plymouth where the later bombing made me beg my mother, singing hymns, to "sing louder mummy, sing louder" and the terror of the bomb, which suddenly went silent after whistling down above ourhouse, again convinced us of certain death (it fell in the next road). All these things I remember, but nothing seems as dramatic as that memory of the German plane so short a distance above us.

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