I painted this aspect of Reigate sitting next to the Reigate Society "Airmens memorial" bench just off the north downs way on Reigate Hil. The town was semi-obscured by mist..

The veiw from the bench shows a gap in the trees still there, 58 years after a USAF "Flying Fortress" bound for the air base at Grafton crashed in fog onto this very spot.

When there painting it at the end of March 2002 the back of the bench was bedecked with floral reminders of those airmen.

There were nine crosses placed there in a ceremony a few days previously for each of those lives lost. Present at that ceremony were two connected ladies. Dorothy Parker (who as a girl held the hand of a trapped airman in the burning wreckage before exploding ammunition drove her back), and the wife of that airman (?)