16th October 1939

Jack Smith

1939

The day was the 16th October 1939 only a few weeks after the declaration of War on the 3ed September. Life in our fishing village had continued unchanged since the outbreak of war apart from the issue of gas masks. All this was about to change as this was the day of the first German air raid on mainland Britain; a date I will never forget. I was at school in the fishing village of Port Seton; Port Seton is on the south side of the Firth of Forth in the country of East Lothian and ten miles East of Edinburgh. During the geography lesson in the afternoon there was a terrific noise which I thought was the teacher in the other class room which was separated from ours by a glass partition pulling the black board over the wooden floor.

In fact it was a German aircraft flying very low over the school, this was followed immediately by machine gun fire from Spitfires of the City of Edinburgh 603 Squadron also flying very low. The German aircraft was taking part in a raid on shipping in the Firth of Forth, most of us in the class jumped out of our seats with fright however our teacher was very good and got us to settle down and continue our lesson, only later were bullet holes found in the school wall.

After school a few of us were playing football when it was rumoured that the German aircraft had been shot down in the sea a few miles off Port Seton this was the first enemy aircraft to be shot down over this country.

One of the fishing boats returning from a days fishing in the Firth of Forth had picked up the airmen and was heading for the harbour.

We all ran down to the harbour in time to see the fishing boat Dayspring come into harbour with the three surviving German airmen from a crew of four.

They were able to climb the steps onto the quay although one of them had blood on his face from an injury near one of his eyes. He was taken to Doctor Blacks Surgery. The other two were escorted by the local bobby to the village police station awaiting the arrival of an army lorry with three soldiers with loaded rifles who took the prisoners to Edinburgh Castle for interrogation.

During the rescue one of the airmen gave the skipper of the Dayspring his Gold ring in appreciation of saving his life. The ring remains in the possession of Skipper John Dicksons family.

The names of the main characters in the Days Like This, apart from myself Jack Smith were the Spitfire pilot Pat Gifford who shot down the German aircraft; the three airmen who were rescued; Hnas Storp, Hugo Rohnke, and Hans Georg Heilscher, also the owner and skipper of the Dayspsring John Dickson.