Pilot Officer Allen

Walking through Field Grove woods I was lost in an immersive dappled worldof dancing light and shadow, when I was stopped in my tracks by a pair of incongruous curved and manicured hedges. Very puzzling. I wasn't on a main path or anything, more an overgrown back water of a path, making the sight even more surprising. It turned out to be a memorial to Pilot Officer John Frederick Allen situated on the spot where his Spitfire crashed into a tree/the ground on the 29th November 1940. Even though it was wartime this wasn't a combat death, the spitfire flight he was with had been scrambled from nearby RAF Warmwell in the late morning and rapidly ascended to 25000 ft, out of the blue Pilot Officer Allen sent a garbled message before his planed dived vertically at speed into the ground. Because the plane was completely destroyed on impact, no mechanical fault could be ascertained, and it is suspected that he could have passed out from lack of oxygen, which was common. Sad stuff, man, war's a waste at the best of times, though somehow events like this seem even more of a waste, he was only 19. The memorial also has plaques to Pilot Officer Allen's parents, whose ashes were interred here too.