The War Years.
 
When war broke out in 1939 I was still going to Heyshott school and in the weeks that followed the evacuees from London arrived in Heyshott. This sudden influx to the village made everyone uneasy but after a few weeks it settled down. We had two boys at Berrywood, but after several weeks their mother came and took them home. I remember this only because when they left they took most of my 'Dinky' toy aircraft. Shortly after this I was told that the boys father had been killed in the war.
 
I went to Midhurst Grammar School for boys when I was 9, with my brother and Jim West. We all went on our bicycles and we did many silly things like sitting on the handle bars going backwards. My brother went for two miles like this, from home to Midhurst railway station. We played at being fighter planes on the bikes in 'V' formation. We used to to break formation to attack other cyclists, sweeping in and firing at them. But one thing we all enjoyed was to go home through Dunford hollow, down the hill and straight through the ford. sometimes the water was very deep and we did not make it accross and got our feet wet.
 
Foxhounds met on the lower green by the cross-roads. A meet was quite a coulourful occasion and many people came to watch until they moved off on the chase, either over the common or to Hoe woods and onto the Downs. The meet was abandoned shortly after the outbreak of war but resumed again about 1946.
 
During the first year of the war, we held several lantern-slide shows in the woodhouse at Berrywood. We lit a copper for warmth and white washed one of the walls. The old lantern belonged to Mrs. Butler of Peace Road Farm, and we borrowed my fathers 6 volt power lamp. The slides were obtained from many different people but we also made up some ourselves. The money which resulted went to the war effort fund.
 
An order was given out to all farmers to place large logs or poles in the fields to prevent aircraft or gliders from landing in them. This was done but not long after this a British Lysander landed in a field between the tree trunks behind the houses at Tuppers Copse in Hoyle Lane. I rushed up to see the plane, the crew of two were both Polish airmen and on a training flight and they were lost and short of fuel. They could speak very little English. The Lysander was not damaged and in the early evening a British pilot came and flew the aircraft off without any trouble.
 
One Saturday morning, a Bristol Blenheim, doing some low hedge hopping, hit the ground and bounced across a field and through a hedge and came to a halt in a field at Coldharbour. It was very badly damaged and the crew of three were taken away in an ambulance. Many boys, including myself, had a good time playing about in it, but a guard was put on it and this came to an end. It was quite a few days before it was taken away in pieces loaded on a long lorry.
 
During the Battle of Britain a Spitfire crashed on top of the Downs. The pilot jumped by parachute and landed twisting his ankle, but otherwise he was unhurt. He said that this was the third morning that this had happened and wondered if when he got back they would give him another Spitfire. He did not see the German that got him that morning. I had a piece of the propeller which was made of wood and had a black covering, which I kept for a very long time.

 
The only other aircraft which crashed in Heyshott was in the last year, when a Hawker Tempest crashed on the common, about a hundred yards from the cross-roads. The pilot had to use his parachute when the canopy broke of in high flight and he landed near Polecats safe and sound. The plane plunged to earth at full throttle and hit the ground so fast it buried itself, leaving nothing to be seen above the ground. I went to see it in the evening and saw a guard standing all alone on the heather covered common. He looked rather odd, but sure enough you could only see twisted pieces of metal in a slit in the ground.
 
It was strange that we did not have any German aircraft down in the village, but we did have plenty of bombs. The first ones fell at Nether Hoyle at Mr. Claytons, who kept chickens and ducks. Some were killed but not a lot of damage was done to the house. He did not originally have a pond at the bottom of the plot, but now he had; the bomb made one for him 25ft. across and 15ft. deep; it was in clay soil and it soon filled with water . I think it was at the same time that the bombs fell at Hoyle Farm, one exploded in the kitchen garden during daylight, doing a lot of damage to the farm house and some people were hurt by flying glass. The other bombs fell at night. The next occasion being at Brown's Copse, when bombs fell and exploded when they hit the trees and although damage was done, no-one was hurt. Other bombs did fall but did not explode; also some incendiaries fell but did not do any damage. Several bombs fell on top of Heyshott Downs doing little or no damage; taking everything into consideration Heyshott was lucky and got away lightly. On several occasions my family went down the cellar. On one such night three flares were dropped over the barn at Berrywood, my father went out and let all the animals out, but nothing else followed, thank goodness!.
 
During a night attack on Portsmouth I was watching events outside the farm buildings, when I heard an enemy aircraft coming along the Downs from west to east it suddenly exploded in flames and pieces fell quickly to the ground, while others seem to flutter to the earth in a ball of fire. It all disappeared to the south of the Downs
 
Some clear nights, solitary planes would come over and one could often see a brilliant white flash just for a split second, which would be a reconnaissance aircraft taking photographs. It was strange to wake up some mornings and to see the ground covered with little strips of silvered paper. These were dropped to interfere with the radar instruments used for plotting the movement of aircraft. We would collect the strips and hang them in the garden to scare the birds away. I discovered later that this material was called 'window'.
 
One Friday evening, when we were at choir practice in the church there was a big explosion and we ran out to see pieces of aircraft and parachutes coming down all over the place. We all got on our bikes and raced to locate the men and wreckage, the main pieces fell outside the parish at Cocking causeway. It turned out that one of the bombs being carried by a bomber had exploded, causing three bombers to crash. Unfortunately many of the crew of two of the bombers died, while the other one managed to force-land without any casualties.
 
Many times my playmates and I played at being fighters or bombers. One memorable occasion was when in a barn we built a platform in the rrafters with tins and pieces of wood as instruments, and with stones as bombs. On the barn floor we spread out a covering of lime, on which which we mapped out an aerial view of the ground. We placed models of old cars, lorries, tanks and aircraft on an airfield. We then went through the procedure of warming up and take off, flying to the target,

 
We has a small aerodrome at Ambersham during the war, which was an air-sea rescue 'drome' with amphibian aircraft, 'Walruses', which were housed in buildings like Dutch barns. many a rescue from the channel was made from here.
 
In the sky above Heyshott one could often see several hundred American daylight bombers assembling and going on their bombing raids over Europe, filling the sky with their vapour trails, then again early in the evening the R,A.F. in a continuous stream of perhaps an hour or more heading for Milan. I think this sight gave people the idea that the war was turning in our favour, as up to now we had been taking it all and as our planes went on the attack the enemy's attacks became less frequent. But London was still being bombed and on some nights we could see the glow of the fires in the sky to the north-east.
 
One midsummer evening it was June 23rd. 1944, at 11.15pm. I was watching a 'flying bomb' heading north at about 3,000 feet, when I saw the light go out, down it went and exploded in a garden of a house in Haslemere.
 
During the raids in this country I will never forget the day when a lone raider bombed Midhurst, and a school in Petworth. this was a terrible disaster as 27 children and 2 teachers were killed. This one attack brought to mind how tragic the war was and I burst into tears.
 
During the preparation for D-Day, we had a field hospital on the lower green at Heyshott; and the wireless lorries were outside my home. I was taught how to read the morse by the sound and not dash-dot as taught at the A.T.C. I enjoyed myself very much. The R.A.F. man played the harmonica and in the evening we all had a sing-song. When D-Day came it was a hive of activity, casualties from the invasion of France were back at the hospital within two hours. During the few weeks they were with us I only heard of one death of a pilot - he was very badly burnt. I was very sorry when one day they just left.
 
Can you imagine jumping up from the table one tea-time at the sound of queer noises and running out of the back door to investigate and seeing two twin-engined 'meteor' aircraft, without any propellers and with smoke trailing from the exhausts, going very fast in the north-westerly direction at a height of some 2,000 feet. I was thrilled as they were the first jet aeroplanes I had ever seen.