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We'd gone to stay with relatives in Kent from our home in the East End of London, to escape the bombing there. I was about 8 years of age. One spring day in 1941, or so I think, I was playing in Oxenhill Road, Kemsing with several other children, when I heard the roaring of two aircraft engines from high up in the sky. We all looked up and I saw two planes having a dog fight, directly above where we were playing. They could not have been more than about 1000 feet away. Suddenly, I was aware of black smoke coming from the tail of one of the planes. It was a Spitfire and it was losing height. It went straight over my Aunt's house, narrowly missing the roof and disappeared from sight. My friends and I all ran in the direction of the plane and I saw that it had crashed into a field about a quarter of a mile from us. We hurried to the field to see what had happened.
The pilot had jumped from the wreckage and I was amazed to see he only had a cut over his eye. Unfortunately, a local Fireman was not so lucky and after having run all the way from the village, he collapsed and died at the scene. I felt very lucky to be alive, as the plane or the bullets fired by the planes, could easily have killed our small group. I often wonder, even now, at the age of 72, if the brave young pilot survived the war.

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