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One completely different episode I clearly remember was the night my mother nearly cut my ear off. She used to give me haircuts and one night by the candlelight she was giving me a little trim when there was a terrific thump and whoosh, then silence for a moment, and then it sounded as if the house was being covered by a net. We had no idea what it was, and then there was silence, absolute silence. So my father decided to go next door, opposite, to find out if they’d heard anything, seen what it was, and it wasn’t until next morning that we found out he’d walked right next to a bomb crater which had landed in the field just opposite our house, about 30 metres, 40 metres away.

In fact there were a string of about five or six bombs that landed, but none of them went off. The first one landed in the field opposite the entrance to Grow, in the Verte Rue, and the second one landed opposite our house where there now stands a red brick house built over where the crater would have been. The third was in a field a little further up the road going towards the Hautes Capelles parallel to the road. The fourth one was in the field between Aladdin’s Cave and the road, there are now bungalows built there, and I believe there was a further one just across the Canus road where Mr Yabsley I think now lives. None of them exploded and the reason given was that it was a plane that was trying to get back to England, a British plane or American plane, a bomber, they were having difficulties and they were so low that in order to get height they released the bombs. As I understand it the bombs were detonated by a propeller on the front unscrewing as the bomb fell. But with the plane being so low the detonator never came out, so we survived. And that meant us being evacuated to aunts and uncles for two or three weeks while they dug the unexploded bombs out.
BRIAN LE CONTE

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