82 years ago today, on Friday 28 August 1942, St Ives, a seaside town in Cornwall, was attacked by two Focke-Wulf-190 German fighter planes adapted for bombing small industrial targets. The lead pilot was Leopold ‘Poldi’ Wenger, 20, who specialised in bombing the gasworks of coastal towns that produced gas for street lighting.
In the approach to the main target, both planes machine-gunned the crowded beaches and town. Then two bombs were dropped. One hit the gasworks and the other, a high explosive bomb, hit a woman who was about to go into her house with her daughter. The daughter, Monica, was not hurt, but Elizabeth James, 48, was killed instantly. Several houses were destroyed or seriously damaged.
Other nearby towns and a bus were also strafed as the German planes headed back to their base in France. A young boy flying a kite near Penzance waved at the planes as they passed low overhead, thinking they were British. Leopold Wenger waved back and smiled at the boy who quickly realised his mistake.
The Hocking family and the narrative in the poem are fictional, but the poem reflects the experience of many for whom a global war was something that happened on the periphery of their experience.
Leopold Wenger was shot down and killed over Vienna, Austria, on 10 April 1945. He was 23.
The Second World War
William Hocking, farmer, 59,
ploughing top field
for the winter cabbage
doesn’t spot the German plane
until right overhead,
and there’s the pilot clear as day,
much younger than his son,
Robert Hocking, farmhand, 28,
exempt from service
on account of work
essential for the war,
back at the house
pouring footings for a barn,
who didn’t see
or hear a thing what with
the mixer going in the yard,
close enough, indeed, to catch
the pilot smile and wave,
and William knew for moments there
he’d been a target in his sights,
time enough to make
a widow of his wife who said
she thought she saw
a plume of smoke
out towards the west,
nothing on the news, of course,
but soon a call from town
confirms a tip and run, one dead,
and over tea and cake
the Hockings all agreed that this
was quite some thing,
then silence falls again
with measured ticking in
the hall and from the mantel clock,
until Westminster chimes the hour,
and cows need bringing in.