Zeppelin shot down

Jean asked me to look at her late father’s diary from 1916. It is full of fascinating information from the First World War.

Fred Inkerman Atkins, who lived in Essex. had a middle name handed down from his grandfather.

On January 31, 1916, three Zepps (as Fred called them) came in from the North Sea with one going down into the sea.

On March 6 Fred recorded heavy snow and there was no school bus so he had to walk to school.

On March 31, he spotted a Zeppelin off Purfleet, Essex, and on April 2 there was an air raid.

On October 1 he saw a Zeppelin on fire in the sky. ‘It was like a huge flare and I could make out the skeleton of it,’ he wrote.