Incendiaries and one night in 1940
NextBack"We were still living down Batchley in 1940. One night the air-raid warning had gone, we heard the sound of an aeroplane and we looked out through the blackout curtains and saw that there were lights everywhere. The plane had dropped some incendiaries. Then there was a knocking at the door and in came the air-raid warden. He said, is there anybody here, sixteen or over? I was then sixteen years of age so I went with him to help put the incendiaries out.”
“The incendiaries had fallen in a horse-shoe shape from the top of Hazel Road in an arc towards Lowans Hill. At least 500 had been dropped and six or seven - incendiaries were lighting-up the road towards High Duty Alloys. Most of the incendiaries were stuck in the earth with the tail fin sticking out. An incendiary bomb was a stick like a big candle, the nose was a little detonator and when it hit the ground it flared like mad to light the target for the planes. You couldn't put it out with water. The warden said the only way to extinguish it was to give it a good blow with your sandbag and knock it into the earth. He said. 'It's quite safe, it won't explode'. We whacked them until they were all out. One fellow wearing an overcoat had put some sandbag round one of the incendiaries and was holding it in his hand. He said, 'How do you like my torch' The warden shouted, 'Put it out you mad idiot.”
