Lighting up the sky

“One night, when I was on duty, the incendiary bombs started dropping right across to the gas works. It was just like daylight with all these things burning with very white flames.”

“The Germans would put a high explosive in the tailpiece so that it would kill anybody who tried to put the fire out and the bombs were going off with a tremendous bang. There were so many that not all of them exploded. Somebody told me that bombs had been dropped on our farm at Brockhill. I went there but the bombs didn't set fire to the farm, they just missed it. A very big bomb came down in Brockhill Wood by Salters Lane and it never went off. It's still there.”

“Later in the war we started using rocket batteries. Eight or ten cannon shells would be put up in a barrage. The gunners would set them off and they would burst in the sky. Then they started the night-fighters. The tracer shells from the night-fighters were phosphorescent you could follow their trail, they were like a line of white hot onions, stretching for a couple of miles.” “Soon after, the nightly visits from the Luftwaffe got less! I think the night-fighters chased the Germans out of the sky.”

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