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Dieppe

Dieppe is a town on the coast of northern France; ferries travel there from Newhaven in East Sussex. During the early 1950s air travel was still in its infancy, and even cars were not that common. It was fairly unusual for British holidaymakers to travel abroad and if they did ven ture across the Channel, it was usually not very far. So it was probably quite adventurous of Mrs Naughton and her sister, in August 1951, to rent a house at Puys a few miles down the coast from Dieppe.

On the night of 19 August Mrs Naughton was woken by her sister, who told her to come quickly. She told her to come outside as there were extraordinary noises coming from the direction of Dieppe. The town seemed to be under attack from the air; they could hear gunfire, anti-aircraft fire and dive-bombers. The two women knew exactly what theywere hearing because their own experiences of such attacks were all too recent, this being only six years after the end of the Second World War. Despite the noise, which continued for almost three hours, they knew this was not a real attack; there were no visible signs either from fires or explosions.

Only the perfectly ordinary streetlights were visible. The two women eventually retired to bed and the next day asked their French neighbours what the commotion had been all about. Their neighbours reported that they had heard nothing but did remark on an extraordinary coincidence; during the war, Dieppe had indeed been the target of several Allied bombing raids. The largest and most destructive of these had taken place exactly nine years pre viously, on 19 August. Essex | France | Wiltshire | Wiltshire | Cornwall | Devon | Devon | Devon | Essex | France | Hampshire | Indonesia | Ireland | Isle of Wight | Italy | Kent | Lancashire | London | London | London | London | Norfolk | North Yorkshire | Norway | Norway | Oxford | Oxford | Phenomena | Salop | Suffolk | Surrey | Surrey | Surrey | Unknown | Warwickshire | Wiltshire |