The Hollington V1 Doodlebug 16th July 1944

THE HOLLINGTON V1 DOODLEBUG 16th July 1944.

It was the afternoon of Sunday 16th July 1944. Our pet canary had been making a strange warning call all day. I was five and a half years old, and my parents and I were working in the garden of our council flat in Old Church Road, Hollington, then a semi-rural suburban village of St Leonards on Sea in Sussex. Gardening could be difficult, as loan enemy aircraft would sometimes target gardeners, pedestrians and cyclists with machine gun or cannon fire, I think as much for sport as anything, but people did get killed in these attacks.

We had almost finished harvesting vegetables for the pantry, when the familiar sound of a V1 doodlebug flying bomb was heard. Not to worry, we knew it would pass safely over if the motor kept spluttering on. The sound of a defending allied aircraft was heard, then the doodlebug’s engine stopped.

“That things stopped!” shouted my father. “Quick inside!”

We ran into the flat and threw ourselves into the Morrison table shelter, provided for us by HM Government because I was an un-evacuated pre-school child, and which we shared at night with the teenaged girl and her baby from next door, because she was too scared to sleep alone.

There was an almighty explosion, and our building was wrecked. Everything fell in, the ceiling the windows, the doors. Glass peppered the plaster walls, and it was difficult to breath for dust. No sign was left of the canary, it’s cage was just a tangled mess of wire.

The first rescuer to arrive was a WVS lady in her smart green uniform, who kicked in what was left of our front door, and called “Is everyone all right?”

“Yes! We’re still alive!” replied my mother.

“Then what you need is a nice cup of tea dears!” She ran into our scullery and lit the gas cooker.

It was a very welcome cupper, but then we discovered that the gas meter above the cooker was hanging off the wall on its lead pipes, one of which was fractured. My father turned the gas off at the mains.

That kind WVS lady had nearly achieved what the enemy doodlebug had failed to do, and killed us all in a gas explosion. She said she had heard the explosion in Ore Village, and had driven at over seventy miles an hour to come and help. Three of our neighbours were killed and several injured by the bomb, which fell on the houses opposite.

At the enquiry, it turned out that the American pilot had used his wing to tip the doodlebug harmlessly into a field, but he had miscalculated and it had fallen on the council estate.

Clifford De Meza.

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