Enjoyable though it is to research the archives, there's nothing quite like an eyewitness account, and I was delighted to receive an extensive set of recollections covering 1938 to 1953 from Ronald Sampson, a retired schoolteacher now living in East Grinstead.

Mr Sampson came to Maldon at the age of nine, attending All Saints Primary School before passing the Eleven Plus exam and getting into Maldon Grammar School. National Service followed, then teacher training, interspersed with work at Sadd's and on a farm in Little Totham.

Mr Sampson attended Maldon Grammar School through the War years, under the headship of Mr Ingham (known as "Inky"). It was a short walk from his home at 13 Silver Street.

He recalls that a corner of the school playing field was occupied by an Observer Corps lookout post with listening equipment. This enabled the pupils to get direct access to information on raids, with a large red circle being hung on the sandbags to indicate a nearby enemy aircraft, replaced by a green one when the plane left.

Whistles signalled the alarm, and pupils and staff went to a ground floor corridor reinforced with extra brick walls.

From 1940, Britain experienced what many had dreaded – total war, with every household potentially being on the front line. Maldon being a coastal town saw some of the action, though it thankfully escaped the intensive bombing suffered by London and other major cities and bases. Mr Sampson recalls two serious incidents.

A V1 flying bomb "came in low from down river and hit and almost demolished a pair of semi-detached houses in Acacia Drive." It severely damaged his Uncle and Aunt's bungalow opposite. The V1 was the world's first cruise missile, thankfully with a primitive guidance mechanism, but the randomness of its strikes made it all the more terrifying.

In a turning off Fambridge Road Mr Sampson recalls seeing two houses flattened by a parachute mine, described as a G Mine. The G Mine was an enormous naval mine dropped on land, with a delayed action. The 2,200lb of explosives could also be detonated by a photoelectric cell, designed to set it off when it was dug out and daylight triggered the cell.

Occasionally the enemy came even closer: Mr Sampson distinctly remembers seeing a Junkers 88 dive bomber approaching his home in Silver Street and releasing its bomb. It landed on a lawn a few feet from the headmaster's study at school.

Like many youngsters, the teenager had a grandstand view of many dogfights in the sky above. One incident was quite traumatic. "My grandmother and I were sheltering in a garage by The Triangle during a dog-fight, and I witnessed a Heinkel 111 bomber fall vertically from the sky and hit the ground with a big explosion in a field up the Shoulder of Mutton [now the Gun Farmhouse, Maypole Road]. I was so shocked that it was several days before I told her about it."

This incident is almost certainly the one researched by Stephen Nunn in his book, 'Heinkels over Heybridge'.

Of course, the tide turned, and by now approaching sixteen, Ronald Sampson was able to witness the Allies striking back. He remembers the Dakotas towing gliders on the way to the D-Day landings (an event many of us were privileged to see re-enacted in June 2019). He also saw the American Flying Fortress bombers assembling over Maldon for their raids over Germany.

Although Mr Sampson mentions sheltering in the many cellars under Silver Street, I couldn't help noticing with my more safety-conscious eyes how much he was out and about during these events! He would not be the only teenager of his generation eager to witness history unfolding.