Flying Bomb

A Memory of Godalming.

It was a warm sunny morning and I was lying in bed in Minster Road. I heard a 'doodlebug' putter overhead, I heard the motor stop, silence... and then the explosion. I swear the blast lifted me off the bed - half a mile away! What I did not know was that my father, walking to work, had just reached the area where the trees are in the picture when the bomb exploded. A tree fell on him and he was trapped under it until some Canadian soldiers came and lifted it off him. They took him in their jeep to St Thomas's Hospital at Hyde Style. He had blast injury of the lungs and split eardrums. After a long slow recovery he was finally able to resume work but he suffered from high blood pressure for the rest of his life.