The War Years
It was during this time 1939 that World War 2 started. I remember the first year of the war was fairly quiet on the island with the exception of food rationing and petrol shortage. At this time the army started to move in to Sheppey, they took over a lot of the houses in Minster and built gun sites at different location on the island such as Ripney Hill, Minster cliffs, Warden Cliff and another was built at Fletchers Battery at Warden. They also took over a large part of our farm at Bell Farm Lane where another gun turret was built and still remained until it was buried by earth about 10 years ago when the land was purchased by the caravan park.
We used to get a few stray bombs dropping about mostly when the German bombers were being chased by our own spitfires, I can remember a dozen or so bombs being dropped on the island, one in Brecon Chase, Windmill Hill, a few on Minster cliffs, another landed in a field at Kingsborough Farm and about four in the Bell Farm area. We had a large incendiary bomb land in the farm yard between Upper Wards Farm and Lower Wards Farm, I remember a large chunk of metal hitting our old farm house, smashing a couple of windows and part of an outside wall. The size of the holes these bombs made were deep enough to put four double decker buses into!! I remember driving one of our heavy horses and cart towards Minster from Bell Farm one afternoon, I was about where the British Queen Pub is now and a bomb landed on the Minster side of Mill Hill which really frightened the horse but luckily it was one of the older ones.
Another incident I remember is 4 or 5 sea mines blowing off course and hitting Minster cliffs, one was close to us at the bottom of Seathorpe Avenue which destroyed a house and killed the occupant living there at the time,and another one at bottom of Baldwin Road cliffs.
Then as time went on the retreat from Dunkirk began and Sheppey took hundreds of returning troops. The army took over lots of houses and buildings, tents were erected for the returning troops. Minster hospital did a terrific job of taking in the wounded soldiers and looking after them. My mother opened our house, which was a large house with 16 rooms, for the army and personnel as a café and rest home for them. She also had four bedrooms set aside for the wives of soldiers and airmen that were wounded and in Minster Hospital, so that they could visit them and stay a few days. We had an awful lot of people through our door, but out of them all only one kept in touch, a Welsh lady who is still alive and remains a very good friend to this day.
Another nasty day that I remember well was a Sunday when Eastchurch Aerodrome was bombed by German bombers in broad daylight with hundreds of Canadian air force personnel wounded. I think I am right in saying that the Canadian air force had only moved to Eastchurch that week. They lost a lot of men and planes in about 2-hours. I remember standing by one of our barns watching the planes going round and round. Most people thought they were RAF but they were German fighters and bombers.
There was another incident I remember, one evening me and a couple of mates were on the cliffs at Bell Farm when a USA flying fortress bomber came along at about cliff top height, we could see it was in dire trouble. There was a crew member standing in an open door, it made a good landing on the mud flats just off the Ship on Shore public house, I later found out that the crew got out safely with only a few minor injuries.
There was also another tragic event I remember, not sure if it was during the war or not but a submarine from Chatham Dockyard was on trials out in the mouth of the Thames when it was hit by another ship and sunk killing all on board. It was eventually raised and beached just off the White House on a sandbank, I'm not sure what happened to it but I believe it was scrapped.
I also recall a pulp boat sailing out of Ridham Dock out into the river Thames where it crashed into one set of the forts and knocked some of them into the sea, I don't know if there was any loss of life in this incident. The three sets of forts were placed in the Thames to help stop bombers heading up to London and to try and shoot down flying bombs or doodle bugs as they were also known.