B A Kid page 8

                                              Part  No 8

There now seems to be more big bombers comming over at night ,to try and get to London to bomb it,so now we spend a lot of  time sleeping in the shelter,My Dad and the other Dads seem to be on fire duty or something now most nights ,also we tend to  take more notice of the air raid warning sirens, but  we never seem to hear an all clear one these days,this is because the Germans seem to come over most nights on there bombing raids to London,Some nights Derek  and Allen and their sisters with  Mrs Butler there Mum come over and stay with us in our shelter,and we tell stories and play games,its good fun for us,,but I dont suppose our parents would say the same.but if they are afraid they dont ever show it, more often now the bombers are met by ack ack guns on Black Heath   which is on the outskirts of London,and although many  manage to get to London,and drop their bombs t many are damaged or shot down,those who think they can get back to Germany, gain hight by  dropping their bombs anywhere on the return,this way they can gain hight, and use less fuel this means that we in Kent get most of the bombs,so we hear bombs being dropped most nights this is why we never seem to hear an all clear siren I guess.
           It now turne out that the army have taken over the big house called Homewood Hall that belongs to the butcher,so now we have real soldiers,with real guns and a real tank,and lorries.my Mum isnt too happy about this as she thinks if the Germans  got to know  they may try to bomb the place and we only live  across the road from this place,also near to Canterbury we have a big army barracks where the Buffs Regiment are stationed,dureing the day the soldiers use the big field where we play to practice using their guns mostly brenguns, and they dig trenches in  which they set up  tipods to hold the guns,they also have Boufour anti air craft Guns on trailers,these are hidden away in the orchard of the house,luckly we can still play in the field,so we get to know many of the soldiers pretty well,and they show us how to load a rifle and if we were able,  fire it.also we get a few cap badges from them, as they like us to clean them,
they teach us how to slope arms,present arms shoulder arms Etc. that they have to do,and how to march,so this is all great fun for us lads.
            Jean Butler has her birthday and has ask me if I would like to come to it.on Saturday
so I am quite looking forward to it,My Mum and Dad are down at their allotment which is alongside  the railway line where they grow potatoes and carrots and greens to help out with the rations.During Jeans party the air raid.siren goes off once again,so we run out to get into the Butlers shelter, but before we can, we see three aircraft comming over the  woods from the south from Dover direction very very low,and we can see sparks comming from their wings,as they approach they wiggle their wings so that they can spray their bullets over a wider area.as they fly over us we can see that they are Focker wolfs,I think they have tried to shoot up a train that was passing on the line,or the house where the army are billeted.I wonder if my Dad and Mum are O K.then there is one great big explosion just up  the road,and a big cloud of smoke.and bits and pieces of wood and bricks from a house comming down.all about us.