An elderly Fifer has recounted the terrifying wartime moment he was shot at as a small boy by a German pilot.
Michael Clark, 80, of Kirkcaldy, was only eight years old when he narrowly escaped death from a volley of bullets during the Second World War.
Talking at the Forth Bridge Raid exhibition in South Queensferry Museum, the former linoleum factory worker told his astounding story to The Courier after reading Richard Demarco’s tale of how he came close to being struck by bullets as a German bomber launched the first air raids over Britain on October 16 1939.
The artist was a nine-year-old boy playing on Portobello Beach with his brother when three ships on the Firth of Forth were targeted.
He told how bullets rained down close to where they were building sandcastles.
Born and brought up in Dysart, Mr Clark lived in Gloucestershire while his staff sergeant father John was billeted near an army barracks with the Royal Engineers.
Young Mr Clark would climb a tree close to the family home to watch for his father returning from the barracks.
One day while he was sitting in the tree, he said: “A German plane flew over the camp, then flew over a second time and came straight towards me.
“It started firing and I could see the bullets hitting the ground, like in the films.
“There were about five or six shots and it was away. I think the pilot must have thought I was an army lookout.”
He added: “I was down out of that tree quick as nobody’s business!”
Mr Clark, who later did his military service with the Royal Army Medical Corps, fascinated his grandchildren with the tale of his close scrape.
He said: “They would ask me, ‘what did you do in the war, Grandad?’ and this one thing really stuck in my mind.
“I remember it vividly to this day.”