The fastest 50 yards dash in history?

It was one of the lovely, late, summer days of 1940 and Peter and I were playing, with several other kids in our road.

Playing in the street held no terrors then for what cars there were had little or no spare petrol.

Mum and Gran were standing outside my Grans shop which took up all the front room and most of the front yard at 13 Goodwood Road. She had started up the shop in 1936 after the death of her third husband, all three dying as a result of service in the Great War.

The kids in Goodwood Road all loved the shop and often had an apple, pear or some sweets put in their hand when they came in for potatoes, tins of fruit, cigarettes for their parents or other vegetables.

After last nights air raid it was quiet,and those adults not at work, came along for a chat and a cigarette and a good moan about Jerry.

I remember taking Peter to the toilet. This meant a trek right through the house, down the back garden past the chicken run and rabbit hutches, to the privy right at the end of the garden. Not a problem on this sunny day but daunting on a winters night when you daren't show a light, but carried a broom handle to break the ice in the privy.

We went back out to play and about twenty of us were throwing a ball around as we drifted further and further up Goodwood Road until we almost reached the bend.

It was then that we gradually became aware of a buzzing sound that quickly grew louder and, as we stopped throwing the ball to each other and looked up to the north end of the road, we saw two black spots in the distance racing our way.

We thought they were Spitfires or Hurricanes on patrol but flying lower than we had seen before. They were so low that we could see the cockpits and then we realised that the wing markings were black crosses.

Suddenly a new noise started. Machine gun fire and something bouncing off the roofs and the road at the top end.

We were transfixed, totally hypnotised, and unable to move as the bullets hitting the road raced towards us.

Then a screaming figure, yelling at the kids to scatter, grab me under one arm and Peter under the other and dived under the shelter of a garden wall. Mum had covered that fifty yards at the same speed as the bullets came towards us.

Amazingly none of the kids were hit although many had bruises and cuts on their hands and knees. The only casualties from those Nazi bullets were some cabbages at the front of Grans shop. Mutilated too much to sell but still good enough for food for the rabbits.

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