Many of you could probably tell a story or two about chance or accidental events, or coincidences, over which you had no control, but which have turned out to be pivotal points in your life, changing things for ever, for better or worse. There have certainly been a few in my life, but the personal story that I am about to tell here must be regarded as exceptional as it involves possibly a unique collection of elements - a quiet residential avenue in Norwich, World War Two, The US Air Force, US General George Patton and a tin of sweets… and it all takes place before I was born!

The story begins in July 1937 when my parents, John and Phyllis, were married at St Catherine’s Church, Mile Cross in Norwich, and took up residence in a bungalow at 26 Hastings Avenue, Hellesdon, Norwich. In due course my sister Joyce joined them; born in February 1939. Later, in September of the same year, Britain and her allies declared war on Germany and World War Two had begun. A significant event for many all over the world but particularly significant to this story for two reasons.

The scene is set and now the events of the fateful day, 20th September 1944, can now be told. Back in Hellesdon at about 4.30 in the afternoon of that day, my sister, then aged 5 was playing with a friend, at her friend’s home in nearby Sutherland Avenue, when her friend’s mother asked them to go on an errand to a shop on the corner of Hastings Avenue and Reepham Road. So off they set, but their route took them up Hastings Avenue and past our home at number 26. My parents by then had begun a practice of keeping a large tin of assorted sweets in the corner of the Living Room, a tradition still being maintained in my days. The temptation of the sweet tin was always far too great for my sister to resist and so the two little girls diverted from their errand to persuade my mother to let them have a sweet or two to sustain them on their journey.

Meanwhile at number 26, interest in the contents of the sweet tin was forgotten as all three occupants, my mother, sister and her friend rushed to the safety of the air-raid shelter, soon to be joined by my sister’s friend’s mother who was understandably concerned for her daughter. Many years later, when my sister told me this story, she was adamant that if it was not for her sweet-tooth she and her friend would have continued to walk up the top of the Avenue and they would have been exactly at the location in Hastings Avenue where the Liberator came down at the time of the crash. But having seen photographs of the crash site (on the 458th Bombardment Group’s website - http://www.458bg.com/crewba6humke.htm ) and personally observed in later years the charred, blackened, wooden fence between numbers 26 and 24, which was a consequence of the conflagration following the crash, it is unlikely that anyone in the open in Avenue at that time would have survived unscathed.

So how did this event change my life? Clearly the obvious one is that my sister survived to take her young brother’s hand, when he had attained the age she had at the time of this traumatising experience, and lead him each week to Sunday School at the church at Mile Cross where this story began. But when I had gathered together all the facts surrounding this event I realised that things could have been so very different. By the time the Liberator, on a south-westerly flight path from the airfield, was over Hastings Avenue it was out of control and it would have been pure chance that would determine where it came down. The intended path would have brought it over number 26 and if it had remained just a few seconds more in flight it could have crashed onto that bungalow instead of number 12. My sister, her friend and my mother would have probably perished. I say “my mother” but if Phyllis had died on that day I would never have been born and I would not now exist. Just a Few Seconds More of the flight of that Liberator on 20th September 1944 could have had the most fundamental effect on my life.