The Night I Rang Invasion Alarm

I left Sussex Road School in the autumn of 1939 and joined the Worthing post office as a telegraph messenger boy.   There were then 13 messengers and I wore this number on my hat badge.

In those days, few people had telephones and many telegrams were sent to troops billeted in the area.  Thus, I was able to pass freely into the regimental headquarters, the 6-inch coastal battery at Grand Avenue and various anti-aircraft sites.

I remember during the Battle of Britain seeing an early morning dog fight over Lancing in which a plane exploded.  

I recall cycling home for lunch over Broadwater bridge when I met an army 15 cwt truck on its way to the police station with two shot down German airmen in their grey uniforms sitting in the back.  

During the daytime bombing raids, the sky was filled with vapour trails as the air war raged above.   Usually, the action was too high up to bother those on the ground, apart from when the noise of the aeroplane engines changed during the attack.

At the end of my shift, I remember cycling up to High Salvington where a German bomber had crashed (Heinkel on 16th August 1940).   Along with other boys, I had with me various tools and as we approached the plane, the noise of everyone banging away and trying to detach bits as souvenirs I was not to hear again until I ended up some years later as a signals sergeant in a tinsmiths shop in Baghdad.

........Air raids at night were more of a menace because you saw nothing, but heard the drone and whine of engines without knowing what was happening.   Also, we delivered telegrams up to 9 p.m. and with no street lamps it was pretty scary for a 15-year-old messenger.

On one occasion, I cycled up to Steyning Round Hill where a bomber had made an almost perfect landing.  This plane was guarded by troops but the sight of nasty blood stains over the perspex canopy has never left me.

One morning, I was on my way to Field Place, which was some sort of army depot, when I saw a parachutist descending.   I rode quickly to the nearest sentry, who was unaware of what was happening, although the air raid had gone on for some time, and was thrilled when soldiers started rushing all over the place.

Because of the importance of the telegraph room in the post office (called the instrument room), there was a Home Guard sentry on the first floor.   It was the habit of the older messengers to pinch the pillbox hats of the junior staff and ram them onto the point of the sentry's bayonet.  Most hats ended up with a slit in them!

When I reached 17, I joined the Post Office Home Guard.   At about 3 a.m. the night mail van arrived from Brighton and it was my job to alert the sorting office staff to unlock the gate.  Unfortunately, I pressed the invasion alarm, which turned out all those in the guardroom.   They were no happy to have their sleep disturbed.

John Goodwin, Goring by Sea, West Sussex