It wasn’t long before a crowd from the village came up the cliff path to have a good look at the German aircraft that now lay crumpled and smouldering amongst the cabbages. Mags and I went too, pulling on wellies and coats over our pyjamas. Pa was already there, helping Mr White, the farmer, to cordon off the wreckage to discourage children from looking for ‘souvenirs’.

‘As if we’d be that silly,’ I said.

Then I saw Michael Baron pick up a fragment of metal half-buried in the ground beside his boot. He wrapped it in a handkerchief and stashed it in his pocket.

Kipper Briggs and his father were there too. Kipper and Michael eyed each other from a distance like tomcats. Kipper said something to his father, and Mr Briggs’s response was to cuff his son casually around the head. Kipper slunk away but Mr Briggs stood there in the mud for a minute or two longer, staring at the huge, blackened skeleton of the plane. He shook his head, looking even angrier than usual.

Mrs Baron was wearing her spotless ARP warden’s uniform.

‘She got that on pretty quickly,’ Mags hissed irreverently. ‘Perhaps she wears it to bed, just in case.’

I snorted and gave my sister an appreciative shove. For a moment, she was the old Mags again.

‘Clear the area, please!’ Mrs Baron was shouting, using what I recognized instantly as her Headmistress Voice. A few people shuffled about between the cabbages, in order to look as if they were being cooperative.

‘Well done, gentlemen,’ she said to Pa and Mr White, gesturing towards the posts they had just hammered into the earth. She smiled at them and Mr White nodded and touched his cap. Then she lowered her voice: ‘I take it there were no . . . survivors?’

Mr White shook his head gravely. ‘Not a chance, ma’am,’ he said. Then he picked up his tools and set off towards the farmhouse while Mrs Baron attempted to shepherd the crowd.

Mags and I managed to duck behind her, so she didn’t see us inching towards the cordon. The plane lay face down in a mess of chalky soil, shards of metal and blackened cabbages. Flames still played about the charred fuselage and dark spectres of smoke rose into the air. The smell of burning was acrid, brutal. A gaggle of children from the village were jumping about, cheering. I turned my back to them.

How many men were inside? I wondered. How many lives plummeting towards the ground, knowing that these were their final seconds?

‘I need everyone to leave the area,’ Mrs Baron shouted. ‘Clear the area, please! It is not safe!’