Grendon
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A recollection of an experience from World War II in Grendon, Northamptonshire by Phil Blacklee
In August 1940 the Spencers were gathering corn from their fields on Yardley Road.
In those days the sheaves of corn were collected from behind the horse drawn binder and stacked in the fields to dry in shocks (or stooks) which had the appearance of a small tent.
Phil Blacklee (born 1919) was helping out with the harvest before joining the army. He wanted to get fit and also to soften up his farm boots for marching. There were no army boots (or rifles!) available for conscripts at that time.
Phil was working with Reg and Eric Spencer, Fred Frost and others loading a wagon similar to the one in the photo.
It was a couple of months after the evacuation from Dunkirk when over 330,000 allied troops were rescued from France by sea. The Battle of Britain was about to begin and a period of daylight and night air raiding had commenced. The Germans were doing all they could to frighten and soften up the British people before the expected invasion. The Luftwaffe flew regular reconnaissance missions to try to identify suitable landing sites for aircraft and paratroopers.
As the farm workers toiled in the field a Spitfire swooped in low over the trees. Phil remembers clearly seeing the RAF roundels on its wings. The plane circled and straffed the farm workers with machine guns. Luckily no one was hurt but the horses pulling the wagon bolted down the field, fortunately without over turning.
Eric Spencer was with the LDV (Local Defence Volunteers) and reported the incident to his troop commander Bill Gibbard. Bill reported to his H.Q. Word came back that they had probably been attacked by a captured Spitfire flown by a German pilot. A number of fighter aircraft having been lost to the Germans during the fighting in France in the run up to Dunkirk.
[edit] Note
This incident was remembered by Phil Blacklee recently when archaeologists excavating the site of a Roman villa in the fields behind Grendon allotments found spent machine gun bullets. The Blacklees were farmers in the village and the family remains there still.
