live up to its promise?" we wondered. My uncle and I climbed the hill to our lane at the top of the garden and waited hopefully for the arrival of the Army. True to their word, a large truck made its way carefully along our laneway and parked in front of the garage at exactly 9 a.m. About eight or nine soldiers jumped to the ground, and soon we had shown them all the places that needed their attention. That was where our contribution ended. We were ordered to go to our respective houses and stay there until the Bomb Squad had completed its work.
Later in the morning, the first retrieved missile was brought to the surface - a healthy 100-lb. undetonated bomb. The squad hoped that the rest of them would prove to be in the same category. It would be a far safer and simpler job to blow them up in a nearby field than to defuse them on the spot.
From the kitchen window, my mother and I watched the first trophy being carried cautiously by two privates - one clutching the nose cone and the other man holding the end containing the remnants of the tail fins, as they walked with care down a long flight of steps behind our house to the patio area outside the kitchen door. They crossed the patio and continued down another equally long flight of steps to the garden gate. This opened into the sheep field. From then on, their progress was even more treacherous as they clambered down a particularly steep slope covered with a mass of ant hills, many of them over a foot high. Eventually, they laid the bomb down in the open field some way from us until the time for its detonation. The sergeant had promised that he would warn my mother and me before they began blowing things up. As I watched one of several more 100-pounders being carried past the kitchen window, a missile in the distant field went up with a tremendous explosion, vibrating throughout the house. Before the explosion, a thick cook book and a bowl of beef dripping, a small addition to our meagre fat ration, were on the kitchen table. During the blast, the bowl of dripping jumped in the air, and landed intact on top of the cook book. It was an amusing incident to an otherwise scary moment.
I then noticed the two soldiers outside putting down the bomb rather quickly beside the kitchen door. I wondered what had happened, when the private in charge of carrying the nose cone put his arms around the shoulders of his companion, hauled him into the kitchen, and sat him down on the nearest chair. "I thought we were going to be warned when you began to blow these things up,” I said. "So did I!" said my friend in khaki with great emphasis. "What's wrong with your pal?" I asked. "I'm not sure," was the reply, "but I thought he was about to faint - so I made him put the thing down." His co-helper did not pass out, but his complexion was ashen and he sat there rigid, staring into space, comprehending nothing around him. We were not sure what to do.
Then the man on the chair stirred and said in a faraway voice, "Am I still alive? Am I still here?" "Why, of course you are - we are all still here," his buddy replied. Then, the seated man said with slightly more comprehension, “I thought it was our bomb that had just exploded. Nobody warned me that the detonating would begin yet." It took a few more minutes to convince him entirely that he was still in this world, during which time I made a cup of tea for all of us. About twenty minutes later, our shaken friend had recovered and the team of two left the house, picking up the unattended bomb which was lying by the doorstep. A tiny black and white bird, its tail bobbing wildly up and down, ran hurriedly past the soldiers as it sought the refuge of a nearby bush. The water wagtail had a natural fear of man but, of the large inanimate object on which it had been sitting, it was quite oblivious. In their muddy boots, the two privates picked their way carefully down the steps and out through the open gate into the field. Avoiding the ant hills, they continued down the slope to the level ground, and then disappeared beyond the hedge, taking their dangerous load to a safer place.
This pattern of bomb removal continued throughout the day. There were intermittent explosions, followed by tall columns of smoke rising into the air from the field in the valley. When all the unexploded bombs had been accounted for, my mother, uncle and aunt and I walked up the hill where the Bomb Disposal Truck was parked, to thank the departing crew and wish them well. As they were about to leave, we shouted, “Hey! Wait a moment. We've just found another one - it's broken through the hedge opposite the garage." The officer in charge inspected the gash in the hedge and the muddy hole beneath it, and looking at his watch, said, "Well, it's 5 o'clock. Time to go. It won't do you any harm there. The bomb is seventeen feet under the ground and, like all the others, it won't be fused." They all departed after a hard day's work and the bomb, so far as I know, is sitting there still.
For whatever reason those bombs were not fused - by ineptness on someone's part or by design on the part of a secret Allied sympathiser, I wish I could offer him or her personally a heartfelt thank you.
THE VILLAGE OF PETT
A few years before the declaration of war on September 3, 1939, Pett, our small village, was a quiet and peaceful place. My family had left London from choice. One summer when I was a school girl, I found myself living in a bungalow six miles from the nearest town. We had exchanged all mod. con. (modern conveniences) for oil lamps and a four-burner Valor Perfection oil stove that baked some of the best cakes I have ever tasted. We even sported among other things the latest in lighting - an oil-cum-gas Aladdin lamp. This provided excellent illumination, but was a little temperamental at times. On occasion, it was "put out to grass" to burn off the flames it threw upwards, instead of concentrating its heat into the gas mantles the Instruction booklet alluded to so confidently. It was three years before electricity was available in the village.
We also boasted modern plumbing This, however, was dependent on the water tank in the loft, which was filled only by the efforts of all of us taking turns at hand pumping the precious liquid up the hill from our new well. After reaching its lofty heights for our household use, the water then deluged to its lowest depths without aid from anyone, as it flowed freely downhill through the pipes to the cesspool, carefully hidden in the centre of a mass of gorse bushes. These bushes, almost impregnable, because of their vicious thorns, were also the home of a huge rabbit warren. Here lived several generations of very hungry fluffy little animals. They had first-class taste; they became great connoisseurs of our vegetable garden as they nibbled the small succulent plants that we had sown earlier, to supplement the absence of a local greengrocer.
I took easily to the novelty of living in another age in such beautiful surroundings, rather than in a house that looked like all the others on the street. The local bus, on which I travelled daily to school in Hastings, was of a rather ancient vintage. It was the only bus in the area privately owned and belonged to a local man. It made four or five round trips to Hastings daily and had its designated stops on the way along. The driver, however, would pick up anyone anywhere, so there were many sudden halts as we rattled on our way.
The driver-cum-ticket collector would welcome passengers clutching the largest and most awkward bundles, occasionally smelling of the farmyard, but thankfully he drew the line at anything to do with livestock. He even acquiesced to the wishes of one colourful character, who regularly acquired a thirst on the way home on the early evening run. As we halted outside the White Hart Inn, where we had an official five-minute wait in order to connect with the bus from Rye, our dehydrated passenger would dash out, cross the road to the pub opposite, quench his thirst, and come running back just in time for departure. On occasions when he took too long to drink his pint of bitter, a healthy blast from the horn would get him scurrying from the public bar. He would return hurriedly, brushing the back of his hand across his mouth to remove the excess froth that had accumulated in the rush to consume the last gulp of beer. With his foot barely on the bottom step of the bus, we would take off in haste to make up for the delay. Our imbiber always got a loud cheer from the passengers on these occasions. Such was the pace of life at Pett in those days.
The village at that time comprised a population of four hundred people, a 19th-century church, a good general store which housed the sub-post-office, plus a village hall - all nestled close together. As for the rest, the village was dotted with a straggling bunch of houses placed at intervals on either side of the lane which wound its way around the fields, leading first east then south towards the sea and down Chick Hill to the beach. The houses were built without much thought of symmetry, but with great care as to where the view could be most appreciated. Although our home was situated several minutes' walk from the road, we had the luxury of a visit from the butcher and the baker twice a week, plus a daily delivery of milk from a cheerful