“I felled a Yank.”
“You what?” asked my mother incredulously, when I somewhat tearfully explained what had happened to my grazed and bloodied knee. “Pat, you fell trees, not people! What did you do to the American?”
It was the early 1940s and wartime in England. I was heading for home after a piano music lesson in the quiet little village that was a mile or so from our family farm. I rode around the school corner on my bicycle, close to the brick wall, on the wrong side of the road as I always did — but this time there was an American Army officer walking there, ready to turn onto the road I was leaving.
We collided! My bike and I, several loose sheets of music and the American officer were all sprawled on the gravel road! Some Americans were billeted in a nearby house called Bayford House, and this particular officer must have been heading for another large house known as Benham House, about a mile away, where more American Army men were also stationed.
The officer scrabbled to his feet and, dusting off bits of gravel from his pants, he asked me, “Are you hurt?”
I was feeling very embarrassed. “No, I’m all right! Sorry about this!” I scrabbled to my feet, picked up the sheets of music and then my bike, and fled homewards.
I related the mishap to my mother as she cleaned and dealt with my bloody knee. “Are you sure you didn’t hurt that officer?” she asked.
“He walked away all right, so I think he was OK.”
That same evening my father’s friend, an American sergeant who cooked for the Americans at Bayford House, came to our home for an hour or two as he often did. It wasn’t long before he noticed the bandage on my knee. He slapped his hand on his leg and laughed.
“I’m darned if I didn’t think it might have been you who collided with the captain! And I guess it was! Are you OK now?”
My mother said I was going to be fine and how sorry she was that I had managed to have such an incident, and to please pass on our apologies to the officer involved! Then she went to the larder and came out with a dozen fresh eggs for the officer’s breakfasts!
We later learned this group of Americans fought in the Battle of The Bulge. I hope the captain came through the war with only a “dust-up” from our collision!
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