Last month a blog here revealed an account of a crashed Avro Lancaster bomber on a training flight on 23rd October 1943, and very close to Warren Farm, Colney Heath. The details of the event had been meticulously recorded, but what brought the story to our attention was the account of a group of scouts allegedly in the area at the time and who carried out the very brave deed of removing bombs from the stricken plane and carrying them a safe distance from the farmhouse, without knowing that they were not carrying live ordnance.
Further research has now been carried out and it seems likely that two separate stories may have been conflated, and no further information about a group of scouts related to a plane crash has yet been revealed. There is still the possibility that scouts were present, but rather later, and were not participants in the recovery. Scouts at camp enjoy retelling stories around a camp fire. No-one that I can recall from my scouting days ever told me that I could not share a story unless it was true – the phrase "camp fire yarns" comes to mind, and a yarn definitely leans towards a story with an invented core!
Both Colney Heath and St Albans Fire Brigades were in attendance after the crash, with Jack Deuxberry driving the St Albans engine. Jack was one of those who is said to have removed the ordnance onto a waiting lorry. Possibly to offer encouragement the Chief Officer suggested this would be medal work. However, awards would later be denied because the bombs were not live. Sections of the Lancaster were strewn over a wide area, including Smallford, the nearby bypass and Colney Heath itself.
Inevitably, I doubt whether we have heard the last of this event. There are many wartime photos of crashed Lancasters, but it seems the Herts Advertiser did not publish this one, even if it could have identified the location as "somewhere in Southern England".
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