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My father was the village constable at Great Bentley in Essex. When the raids started he had calls from local farmers saying, “There’s something landed in my field”. I would go with dad to identify what had been dropped. I was the envy of my pals as I had such a good collection of shrapnel. The bomb disposal would come to the police house to collect what we had found. We had to be careful when the Germans started to include explosives in the incendiaries. I remember “Butterfly” bombs. At first we picked these up, but later they had anti handling devices — many people were injured by these.

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