The Middy September 23 1999

Look to the skies

While the success of the RAF in defeating the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain put paid to any invasion plans by Hitler, Mid Sussex – with the rest of Southern England – suffered intensive bombing raids during 1940 and beyond.

Hardly a town or village emerged unscathed, though some suffered more than others. Records show that a total of 618 high explosive bombs fell on the Cuckfield rural district, as well as 25 oil bombs and 23 flying bombs, killing 13 people and injuring many more.

Around 14 high explosive bombs and 200 incendiaries fell on the Burgess Hill area, while more than 500 properties were damaged in the Cuckfield Urban District, including Haywards Heath.

These are mere statistics, though, and it is the various eyewitness accounts – including those of the Middy’s third editor, Albert Gregory – which give us a more vivid picture of events.

On a Sunday morning in 1940, for example, several German bombers came hedge hopping over the Burgess Hill area and shops in Upper Church Road were machine-gunned without anyone being injured. The fortnight later there was a dog fight over Ardingly and a Spitfire shot down a Dornier 17 near Lywood Common, killing two of the crew and wounding another.

One German bomber came down in the fields near West Hoathly – wooden crosses in the local churchyard bear the names of the two crew members who died.

One of the worst incidents in mid Sussex was at Ardingly on a night in October, 1940, when two bombs destroyed a pair of semi detached dwellings, New Oak cottages, with the loss of five lives, including John Stevens, the village’s oldest resident, his son George and his daughter-in-law. The bombs left a large crater where the bungalows are stood, though as the debris was being cleared a dog belonging to George Stevens scrambled out alive.

Burgess Hill historian Mark Dudeney, whose family moved to Hassocks in the latter half of 1940, recalls that sleep was virtually impossible once the nightly bombing campaign on London started in earnest. First they would be the earsplitting wail of the air raid sirens, then the throbbing drone of enemy aircraft overhead.

He said: "after the all clear sounded, I would slip into the garden, because from there it was possible to see the flash of explosions on the northern sky light, and the tiny fingers of searchlights probing into the darkness.

"I should have been frightened but cannot recall that I ever was. Thoughts of death and injury never entered my head, any more than it occurred to me that we might lose the war. "

The raids were also an exciting time for John Taylor who, as a child in the war years, lived in West Street, Burgess Hill.

"We used to love watching the planes, whether they were our own or the Germans, going over, "he recalled, "of course, we were always cold indoors, but we didn't go. "

John and his Friends found a method of identifying the planes: "in those days, all the cigarette packets – if you could get cigarettes, as they were on rations – have cards in them, with silhouettes of the planes, so that we could recognise which ones were English. "

He added: "I've still got my collection. Even at my young age, I could recognise some, and know what make they were. “

The youngsters were able to have a closer look than usual after two spitfires, piloted by brothers, touched wingtips, which sent one of them crashing down in fields near Keymer Road.

John added: "we were quickly on our bikes and out there. As children it was exciting to us, rather than frightening. We were too young to feel we were in danger, although lots of incendiaries rained down.”

Hassocks was largely spared from attack, although Hurstpierpoint was not – a bomb which landed on the village killed the four-year-old daughter of the vicar and injured many others.

Representatives of all the civil defence services attended the little girl's funeral at her father’s church.

Cuckfield claims the dubious distinction of being the first place in the county to be hit by a doodlebug., While in Burgess Hill a bomb fell at the rear of the police station (by a miracle the officers on duty were not even injured) and another fell in the garden of Crescent Road.

More bombs landed to the south of the town, in fields between Greenlands and the railway line, which left two large craters, one of which was half full of water. The young Mark Daphne went to inspect the damage with his brother: "it was perhaps the only worthwhile thing the Germans did, at least as far as the cattle were concerned, for they used it as a drinking hole for years to come,” he remembers.

Those who could afford it had private air raid shelters built in their gardens, others had basements converted. In the years immediately before the war, an enterprising builder, who put up some bungalows near Mackie Avenue, Hassocks, included a (supposedly) bombproof cellar under the kitchen floor, as an added inducement to buy.

During these periods of bombing, German pilots returning from a London raid would often jettison any remaining bonds on the Mid Sussex area, and while many fell in fields, others destroyed houses and buildings. Brook Street, Cuckfield, suffered in this way, as did parts of Haywards Heath.

A bomb which fell near the recreation ground damaged the pavilion and clock, uprooted trees and brought down electric light cables in Perrymount Road. A newspaper boy, employed by Middy owners Charles Clark, who was crossing the rec at the time, was struck by a cloud of earth and required hospital treatment.

After a lull in the bombing of Mid Sussex towns and villages, hostilities resumed in spring 1943 and summer 1944. One of the most notable incidents was in the early morning of March 12, 1943, when an Allied bomber, whose occupants had bailed out, crashed into the beautiful residence of Lieutenant Colonel Giles Loder in at High Beeches, Handcross, and set it on fire. Three female servants were killed and most of the house and its contents were destroyed.

In 1944, in one of the last German onslaughts, about 20 flying bombs came down in the Cuckfield rural area; one fell at Mizbrooks Farm and one near Haywards Heath. After that, the ordeal was nearly over.

Acknowledgements: The Old Century, a forthcoming publication by Mark Dudeney