The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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210509 Herbert Frank Overall from:Cornish Hall End My maternal grandfather - Herbert Overall of Millers Row, Cornish Hall End near Finchingfield was a farm worker prior to WW2 then went to work for Frederick J French (builders and ground works) as a driver/labourer and as such was employed around the area - to my knowledge he worked on the airfields at Great Sampford and Ridgewell although he may well have worked on others too (given the high number of airfields in the area) but I cannot recall him mentioning any more. With regard to Gt Sampford (actually closer to Wimbish Green), I remember him telling me of one occasion when the area surrounding the landing strip was being 'graded' and a chap on some sort of tractor unit was working whilst a raid had started - he wasn't aware of anything wrong until an unexploded bomb or drop tank bounced past his tractor ,at which point he dived into cover. Another tale attached to Sampford - I visited the area with my grandmother in the mid 1990s and she got talking to a local who said that the young men would come back from flying their Spitfires - so pumped up that they would beg steal borrow any pushbikes they could get hold of and cycle to the water tank, climb up with bike on back - then cycle round the top of the tanks for the lark, possibly in defiance of the stress and close proximity to death they had escaped for another day. Of Ridgewell I have only the story of one its first inhabitants coming to grief - a Short Stirling landing and overshooting the runway and presumably folding up its gangly undercarriage. Kevin Sullivan Related Content: Can you help us to add to our records? Add a record to our website. The names and stories on this website have been submitted by their relatives and friends. If your relations are not listed please add their names so that others can read about them Did you or your relatives live through the Second World War? Do you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or letters from that period? Have you researched the names on your local or war memorial? Were you or your relative evacuated? Did an air raid affect your area? If so please let us know. Help us to build a database of information on those who served both at home and abroad so that future generations may learn of their sacrifice. Contact us. Celebrate your own Family History Celebrate by honouring members of your family who served in the Secomd World War both in the forces and at home. We love to hear about the soldiers, but also remember the many who served in support roles, nurses, doctors, land army, muntions workers etc. Please use our Family History resources to find out more about your relatives. Then please send in a short article, with a photo if possible, so that they can be remembered on these pages.

The free section of the Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers. We have been helping people find out more about their relatives wartime experiences since 1999 by recording and preserving recollections, documents, photographs and small items. The website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions. If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running. Hosted by: The Wartime Memories Project Website is archived for preservation by the British Library Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV - All Rights Reserved We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.