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This story was submitted to the People's War site at Banstead History Centre on behalf of Mr M Corty. It has been added to the site with the author's permission and he fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

My Sister and I were on the back lawn of our garden at number 53 Nork Way, Banstead, when we heard a VI flying bomb approaching. We started to run towards our air-raid shelter, which was some distance down the garden. Then we realised that the Morrison shelter, in our house, was much closer.

While we hesitated, the bomb appeared over the trees, flying almost directly towards us. As it roared closer something hit the bomb, causing it to climb sharply off to the right. We stood frozen to the spot and watched the flying bomb level out and begin to fly in a huge circle around us. We just stood staring and turning, following it around. When the bomb arrived back at the place where it had been hit, it turned back onto its original course and flying directly over us, continued on its way towards Sutton.

My Sister and I were evacuated to a farmhouse called Beauchamp, at Washfield, near Tiverton in Devon. One day, with great excitement, we heard that an enemy bomber had crashed in a nearby field. We all rushed off on our bikes and arrived to find a crowd of people standing in a wide half circle around the burning plane. Flames were still licking along the ribs of the glowing skeleton. We could feel the heat on our faces. The crowd was so silent that we could hear the cracking and splintering noises as different parts of the plane cooled.

As we all stood staring at the dying flames of this huge plane-shaped bonfire, I slowly became aware of a blackened lump, about ten feet up, near the front of the plane. With a horrible shock I suddenly realised that I was looking at the burnt body of the German pilot.

The house, Silver Birches, where my Great Aunt Bertha Myers lived, was near Bovingdon. After Pearl Harbor the Americans arrived and built a huge airbase and Silver Birches was now near the end of one of the runways.

One day Aunt Bertha heard a crashing sound and looking out of her kitchen window, saw that a plane had overshot the runway and ploughing through a line of small trees, had come to rest at the end of her garden.

Almost before the plane had stopped moving, the American crew had leapt down from the plane and sprinted for cover. My Great Aunt did not notice the fleeing crew, for she was searching for buckets. She had seen fuel spurting from the broken plane - what a terrible waste, especially in wartime.

The expected explosion did not occur and when the crew felt that it was safe enough to take a look, they saw this dear old lady, walking round the plane, placing buckets to catch the escaping fuel.

Later, having got her well away from the cooling engines, they put it to her that such high-octane fuel would have been no good for her car.

"Oh yes I realise that" she answered, "But I have a generator here for my electricity and I thought that it might have been possible to use it for that".

The destruction by a flying bomb of 53 Nork Way, Banstead, Surrey on 3rd July 1944.

I was cooking breakfast, so I did not hear the flying bomb approaching. My husband was upstairs shaving.

"We'd better get into the shelter: this one sounds rather close," he called out running downstairs.

Thank God for Herbert Morrison: in the front room stood our steel Morrison table shelter. The moment that we entered the room I sensed acute danger: our red setter dog, normally anywhere but in the shelter during raids, was crouched trembling inside. We both ran. As we threw ourselves in beside the dog, a high pitched pinging sound was followed by a tremendous noise and swirling dust as the house collapsed: the flying bomb had hit the ground about seven yards from the northern corner of the house. The explosion blew the carcass of the bomb away down the garden among the cabbages.

One solitary wall of the house was left standing to first floor height and the bedroom floor above had collapsed against it, leaving a narrow triangular passage leading out from the shelter exit. The dog led the way as we crawled out of the ruins.

Nancy L Cory

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