A Railwayman's War: Part 4

To train ourselves and to get footplate experience, engine cleaners used to ride on the footplate of engines leaving the sheds, leaving the sheds, getting permission from the crew, you climbed on board.
This always involved a 'short' trip, Thorpe Bay,Southend East or Southend Central. Then returning back to Shoebury on the next down train, again on the footplate.
On one short trip to Thorpe Bay and back we were all aware of the aerial activities going on.
Looking towards the Thames Estuary I was aware of something falling out of the sky. A German airman with his badly damaged parachute above him, landed somewhere between St.Augustines church and the golf course.
I beleived he had jumped out of the aircraft that crashed into the trees behind The WhiteHorse pub in Lifstan Way and Southchurch Road.
The German had a plot in Sutton cemetery, the bodies taken back to Germany after the war.

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