The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

4
Hook, Line and Sinker
GUNNER STAN FRASER WAS woken up in his billet near Arras at around 4.50
a.m. by the drone of aircraft. Wearing his pyjamas – a habit that amused his
comrades no end – he slipped on his pumps, scampered down the steps of
the loft over the large stable below and out into the yard, only to see three
German bombers, the dark crosses on their wings clearly visible, streak
across the sky against the dark glow of the rising sun. Almost immediately
the regiment’s heavy 3.7-inch anti-aircraft guns opened fire.
Hurrying back up into the loft, he hastily put on his trousers and began
watching the opening salvoes of the German offensive from the window,
gradually joined by his mates as they, too, were woken by the noise of
bombs exploding and guns booming. From their window they could quite
clearly see the regiment’s batteries firing, and puffs of black smoke littering
the sky as the shells exploded. Soon the raiders passed, the guns quietened
down and they all clambered back into bed again. An hour later, however,
there was a loud explosion nearby and the entire building shook, followed
by several more blasts as bombs detonated. A keen amateur film-maker,
Stan sprang out of bed once more as another wave of aircraft thundered
overhead, and grabbing his cine camera ran down into the yard with two of
his comrades, then sprinted up a shallow wooded hill behind their billet. As
they crested the hill, machine-gun fire rattled out from an aircraft
somewhere nearby. With his camera ready, Stan saw two aircraft suddenly
roar into view through a gap in the trees. ‘The last we saw of the planes,’
jotted Stan, ‘was when they were streaking away across the house tops of
Arras.’
Not so far away from Stan and the rest of the 4th Heavy Anti-Aircraft
Regiment was the Headquarters of the British Expeditionary Force.
Habarcq, a pretty and normally quiet village of old brick farmhouses, lime
trees and horse-chestnuts now in leaf, lay just eight miles west of Arras,
amidst the wide, rolling arable countryside that some twenty and more
years before had been at the heart of the Western Front. In the white-stoned