Low flying V1

It was the summer of 1944 and I was coming to the end of my two years training as a GPO engineer ( Now BT ), and had recently passed for air crew in the RAFVR and was waiting call up. My headquarters at this time was Holborn Telephone Exchange in High Holborn, which housed a 10.000 line telephone exchange unit a large tandem exchange for re-routing calls to other exchanges and the equipment for the famous "TIM" which at the time had a lady announcer who would recite precisely "At the third stroke" etc......
I was a member of the firefighting team, I dreaded the fire drills as I had to run the rather large hose out for several yards holding on to the brass ends of the nozzle and I always finished up with very chafed and bruised thumbs. I also did my firewatching duties in this building with the senior engineers Messrs Nightingale and Watson.
On arriving for duty one morning I was told to assist in the re-wiring of some equipment in the Senate House Building which at the time was probably one of the tallest buildings in London, and was part of the University of London, and also if my memory serves me correctly it housed the Ministry of Information. On the flat roof of the main building the Royal Corps of Observers had an observation post, and it was a piece of their equipment that had to be re-wired. We were part way through the job when an air raid warning red was received, which meant enemy aircraft were approaching.The Observer Corps became very vigilant. We were now into V1, buzz bomb, doodle bug (call them what you will ) raids. Before long the ominous sound of the V1 could be heard. Speaking for myself and I'm sure many others, I hoped the familiar noise wouldn't suddenly stop, as you knew it would land somewhere fairly close. On this occasion the noise got louder and louder, we were looking skywards in the direction from which we thought it was coming only to be completely surprised to see it not too far away and that it's altitude was lower than we were on Senate House, As we looked down the V1 scooted by on a level steady course. I don't recall hearing it explode.

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