Air Raid

Heroes Remember

Air Raid

Transcript

And the second day I was in Bournemouth they said, "Oh, ok we got a gun for you on top of a building down near the harbour there. You can man that tonight". So, that was interesting but we didn't do anything, we just sat there all night and saw nothing. And, not the next day, but the following day, I was once again back up on my gun on the top of... there was another gun crew up there too and lo and behold, ten Folkwolf 190 fighter bombers arrived. Coming in right on the water and just going like the very devil, and one of them must have practically flown down the barrel of the adjacent gun because I guess they hit the pilot, cause all of a sudden he just wheeled over and crashed in the street below. Fortunately in the street, nobody else hurt except the pilot and I don't think there was too much of him by the time he hit the ground. The rest of them went in dropping their 500 pound bombs and then turned around and on, when they were leaving, they went out strafing. They carried both cannons and machine guns. So they left strafing. The raid was just over in a few, very few minutes and there were 100 dead Canadian airmen. Or 100 dead airmen, they weren't all Canadians, ‘cause we had Australians there, and New Zealanders, South Africans, and a few Brits I think. But there were 110 airmen killed in that little raid in that moment. The Royal Air Force Fighter Command got two more Folkwolfs on the back way across the channel on their way home. So I'm not very sure just how successful the raid was to lose three aircraft, but they did, they did do a lot of damage to us. After the raid was over there was, there was so many casualties all over the place. I sat down beside an Australian, started to talk to him and all of a sudden he fell over. He had, he had a bullet hit him right in the heart, he just never even moved. He was still sitting exactly where he was and this must have been about an hour after the raid was over and, but he was as dead as can be. Had two of my friends sitting in the park, they were lying on a ground sheet ‘cause it had rained the night before, and they heard the planes coming over and the guns going off. They rolled apart and cannon shells cut the groundsheet right in two, between them.

Description

Mr. Allen talks about his first overseas wartime experience manning a gun during an air raid.

Bruce Allen

Mr. Allen was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1923. His father worked in the foreign service of the Royal Bank, and returned to Toronto, Ontario, in 1930. Mr. Allen enlisted at the age of eighteen, completed basic training, and shipped overseas to England where he joined 172 Squadron, Coastal Command. His wartime experience involved convoy protection and submarine patrol. After returning to Canada, Mr. Allen pursued a career in various facets of television broadcasting. He remains very interested in Veterans' issues, and belongs to several Veterans organizations; 403 Sarnia Wing Air Force Association, Royal Canadian Legion, Veterans Club of Sarnia, and the Bomber Command Association.

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