doodlebug "thats not cricket".

My most vivid memory of the war came from the summer of 1944.
What could be more relaxing, there had been no air raids for a couple weeks, it was a bright sunny summers day, birds singing, butterflies fluttering by. I was lazing on top of the shed watching the two cricket matches going on in the London Hospital Sports ground. Dad was up in the tree next door helping our neighbour pick his cherries.

Then suddenly, without warning, we became aware of an all too familiar rumbling drone like noise, but much louder than usual. I turned to see coming from behind us, fairly low over the house, a Doodlebug, silvery grey and spitting flame from its tail mounted engine. It was spluttering its way towards the Crooked Billet. “One good thing about Doodlebugs” I thought to myself “while you can here them, there is no danger”. Then there was silence!

I looked up and could see its nose dipping towards the cricket pavilion, immediately looking back to the field I saw two empty cricket pitches with some thirty white blobs lying scattered round the edge of the field. There was nothing any of us could do but wait for the explosion and inevitable deadly blast!

The next few seconds seemed like hours, my father was too entangled in the tree to get down and I seemed to be glued to the shed roof, there was total silence.

Suddenly the Doodlebug coughed back into life, levelled out and chugged its way across the Crooked Billet and beyond towards Tottenham, leaving us white faced and shaken, to climb down from our perches and in true British style, go for a cup of tea.
Needless to say that by the time the tea had been drunk, the cricket had resumed and by that evening the cherries had been picked.

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