| Much of the information on this site is comes from people I interviewed in
the Midd 1990's. I recorded these on cassette tape for later transcription; the
prospect of being able to share these recordings on the internet had not
occurred to me so I did not ask permission to "broadcast" them. Therefore I
trust that surviving relatives of these folk have no objection to the use of
recordings now that the technology is now available to share them. This recording is of Madge Ford, who lived in one of the maisonettes in Station Avenue during the war and would have been in her late 20's or early thirties at the time. She tells of a bomb landing in the playing field behind her home. (Interview recorded spring 1995) (Note: Madge suggests that the bomber crashed in Worcester Park. The only record I can find of a plane coming down in Worcester Park is a fighter, not a bomber; and at a different time of day. Therefore I conclude that this detail is an assumption on Madge's behalf.) Click on link for MP3 audio file which will play in your default media player. File size: 300K The following text, from the BBC Peoples War web site gives another account of the same incident. "At about this time my father had come home on leave from the RAF and he and I were in the house alone when an air raid began and we stood on the front door step watching the aerial attack on Croydon Airport, which was then an RAF fighter base. The aircraft were merely tiny specks in the sky, weaving intricate patterns with their white vapour trails, which were interspersed with puffs of black smoke from gunfire. One German bomber was chased away from the target and passed over overhead; in its flight it dropped its bombs. One fell exploding on impact in the Salesian Sports field in Old Schools Lane, Ewell, the other fell in Sunnymede Road behind our home in Green Lanes. This bomb remained there unexploded being a delayed action bomb. Being completely unaware of this occurrence, that night when the Germans returned for another raid, we secluded ourselves in the safety of our Anderson shelter at the end of our garden. This was an almost life-threatening mistake because at about half past midnight the delayed action bomb went off and our family were shaken like so many peas in a whistle being blown at full blast. We were not only shaken, but also most definitely stirred. The following morning when we recounted our experience to neighbours they were all wisely saying that the ARP had warned everyone in the neighbourhood not to use Anderson shelters in their gardens. Everyone but us had been informed, how we came to be missed out, we never knew, we only knew that our number had not been called, so it certainly wasn’t 5." David Rich BBC Peoples War Full account at:- http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/10/a6655610.shtml
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