My uncle Lawrence Holford was killed by a Bristol Beaufighter. Maybe two. 

My father worshipped his older brother Laurie, and growing up my brother and I heard the story that he was killed in the Brighton Blitz while serving as a special reserve constable with the Brighton police.

I imagined a lone policeman on dark streets, German bombers overhead, searchlights probing the sky, ack-ack guns, the whine of bombs, thundering explosions of falling masonry and the shattered plate glass of shop windows.

The truth is something quite different. 

Every family had such stories and as is the way of children hearing about ye olden days we didn’t pay a lot of attention or show much interest. That was just the way it was. 

And then – years later – you find yourself asking questions and wondering why and what and who and how and what must it have been like. 

In 1939 Lawrence Holford was a general laborer listed as doing heavy work. For years he had worked his father’s tenant farm at Black Rock right on the coast at Roedean, just east of Brighton.

This was my grandfather’s business card.

Green meat, by the way, means animal fodder – hay, clover, alfalfa.

Black Rock Farm was perched right on the edge of the cliffs. My father would have grown up to the permanent roar of the waves.

Sometime after WW1, coastal erosion ate into the cliffs and the farm and part of the coast road slid into the sea.

I have a lovely little painting of the farm that my father treasured. See sidebar for what my brother Chris had to say by way of explanation.

How did PC Holford die?

This is an extract from David Rowland’s book The Brighton Blitz:

Wednesday April 30 1941. Lawrence Holford, a forty eight year old war reserve police constable, was on patrol in the Lewes Road area. His route covered Dewe Road, where the Allen West factory was engaged in war work. At about 3pm PC Holford called in on the gatekeeper, Stephen Dyer; both were in the gatekeeper’s hut when disaster struck. There had been a number of allied aircraft in the sky above Brighton. Suddenly two Beaufighters collided; there was a deafening crash and the planes disintegrated over the factory. The engine of one smashed down through the hut, killing PC Holford and Mr.Dyer instantly. The other engine fell on allotments in Roedale Road. The Beaufighter, then, was still on the secret list, and local reports of the tragedy referred to the downed planes as Spitfires. Such was the impact that pieces of the doomed aircraft were scattered over a large area of the town. One pilot managed to parachute to safety but the other three aircrew of the two planes were killed – one crashing through the roof of a house in Roedale Road.

In Folly and Misfortune

The Beaufighters were part of  219 Squadron based at RAF Tangmere and were engaged in daylight training prior to becoming operational at night. They were practicing Ground Control Interception techniques although why they were doing this over a populated area who knows. Sussex History Forum has more details.

Beaufighter R2127 was crewed by Sergeants Harry Twidale andThomas Forster and R2083 by Pilot Officers Richard Holman and Alexander Black. At least two of the four were able to bale out. Only one – Sergeant Harry Twidale  (the National Archive lists him as Twindale and killed) – survived. One crashed through the roof of a house in Roedale Road. 

The American poet Howard Nemerov was a Beaufighter pilot first with the Royal Canadian Airforce and then the US Army. Long after the war he published War Stories: Poems about Long Ago and Now, a collection that included poems about his experience as a pilot. This one tells how folly and misfortune took the lives of so many.