Tea Under Fire

A Memory of Sandhurst.

During the Second World War I was sometimes taken by my mother to stay with her grandmother, Mrs Bevis, at the house called Rivermead, about 100 yards downhill from the church, by a sharp bend to the left. Mrs Bevis must have rented it early in the war, having left her home in Jersey before the occupation of the island. I was about 4, when the Germans were still in the ascendent, and we were enjoying tea out in the garden when we heard a small plane, rather low, and idly looked up.

"It's one of theirs !"

It was; and it appeared to be languidly circling around us. We rapidly abandoned the tea-table and scuttled indoors as fast as my tiny legs and Big Granny's bigness would allow. In my memory she was nearly spherical, and I remember the sight as I followed her, dragged by my mother. Scarcely were we in the house when the blighter strafed it. A large Chinese vase was shattered, and there was a bullet hole in the hall floor into which I pushed my finger.

There must have been damage in the roof and the upper floors, of course, but that was of no concern to me, too young, really, to have been frightened - though I was certainly excited by the excitement of the grown-ups. Mercifully, no-one was hurt.

Why a Luftwaffe pilot so close to the RMA should be wasting time and ammo shooting up women and a child at tea puzzles me to this day. Did he get home unscathed and unrepentent, I wonder? Was he running out of fuel, and simply mischievously hanging about before gliding to a field and captivity?

I wonder, too, if there is any record of this audacious impudence - perhaps in the local press? I cannot be at all precise about the date, as you will appreciate. I was born in August 1938, if that is any guide to set beside the changing situation in the air war.

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