Wwii Billet

A Memory of Outwell.

My mother, Maude Doyle was billeted at a farm in Outwell while stationed at searchlight battery at Sutton Bridge that served as RAF base. Fighter aircraft used the gun butts there to adjust their cone of fire I understand. The farmer's name was Wiles and he and his wife had a son and lived in a tiny cottage and I think they only had room available for one billet. While returning from a dance in Wisbech during the blackout my mother was struck down by a MG car driven by a doctor, as luck would have it, as he could provide aid on site. She suffered a fractured skull and an injured leg that proved so severe that the surgeons wanted to amputate! However, her sister prevailed on medical staff to save the leg and along with the recent availability of Penicillin, her life was saved! She returned to her home in Canning Town, August 1940, only to find she was unable to bend her still healing injured leg enough to climb down the Andersen bomb shelter steps! So she had to return to Wisbech hospital to give the injured leg a chance to heal! No chance, the Luftwaffe were still trying to kill her as one day a lone raider flew around the hospital and bombed and strafed the hospital water tower while mum sat up in bed on the second floor, unable to move after watching the rest of the ward and nursing staff run to the shelters at the sound of sirens!
I am the youngest of her three sons and remember my older brothers hunting eels in the dykes and and surfing behind a small caterpillar type tractor in strawberry fields and seeking out chicken eggs laid amongst nettles and blackberry undergrowth. Back then, late forties early fifties, real farming still existed!

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