- Contributed by听
- lesleyharrison
- People in story:听
- Geoffrey Martin
- Location of story:听
- CLIFFE KENT
- Article ID:听
- A2111310
- Contributed on:听
- 05 December 2003
WORLD WAR II MEMORIES
During the Blitz (night bombing) in 1940 the Germans used different types of bombs including high explosive land mines which came down on a parachute, incendiary bombs and oil bombs.
One night during a raid in 1940 I was standing outside our dug out with my uncle. He was a fireman for Cliffe Fire Brigade. I was a messenger boy. We could hear a German bomber approaching, not very high, and as it got nearly overhead we heard a loud whistle of a bomb coming down. We both dived down the dug out waiting for the explosion but it never came, just a very loud thud. We went to see what had happened and about 100 yards away there was a small cul-de-sac of 10 wooden houses with the lovely name of Soap Suds Alley. An oil bomb had demolished one of the houses, all but the bedroom, where an elderly couple Mr and Mrs Hall had been sleeping. We got them out and they were shocked but unhurt. The incendiary bomb, which was meant to ignite the oil, had landed well away. Another oil bomb landed in a back garden and again the incendiary bomb was well away.
The next morning I went to find out what had caused the loud thud. It wasn鈥檛 the usual bomb crater just a large whole 20 yards from rows of houses. I dug around in the hole trying to find pieces of the bomb鈥檚 casing but could only find pieces of the bomb鈥檚 fin. After a few days a metal flag was put beside the hole which meant it was an unexploded bomb. When the bomb disposal squad came the village was evacuated for about a quarter of a mile. When we were able to return I went to see the bomb in the back of the lorry. It weighed 2,000 pounds, quite a large one. We had heard earlier that day that the officer who had made it safe had been awarded a medal for diffusing a bomb of similar size close to St Paul鈥檚 Cathedral. We gave him a loud cheer. The Royal Engineers who made up the Bomb Disposal Squad were very brave men and suffered many casualties during and after the war. I must have been the luckiest boy alive to have survived digging around in a hole on top of a 2,000 pound bomb.
By Geoffrey Martin
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