大象传媒

On Monday 26 October 1942 I was at home in the morning and Ted was at school in town. It was Black Monday in more ways than one, for you never saw a more miserable day in your life. Clouds hung low, it was misty, and rain hung in the air. It was cold. I stayed in the house with my Mum. Dad must have been at work. Ted was due home from school at lunchtime. Then, according to 鈥楩ront Line Eastbourne鈥�:

鈥楥annon firing and machine-gunning, the plane flew out of low cloud and sent down four bombs which wrecked a number of properties, including the Alexandra Arms, and severely damaged many others, large holes being torn in the walls of some houses. St Andrews Church had windows smashed. In all, fifteen persons were fatally injured. One bomb fell in the roadway in Seaside close to a number of vehicles, including two buses, the driver of a Corporation bus being among those killed. Some of the passengers in the bus, which was stationary at the time, were injured. A short distance away a lorry was set on fire and was burnt out.鈥�

Mum and I knew nothing of that. All we knew was that something had happened on Seaside, perhaps half a mile away, just out of sight from us on this gloomy day. Ted was due home at any minute but had not come home and could be somewhere in the vicinity of whatever had happened, on a bus on his way home from school. There was nothing we could do but wait, wait, and wait, peering across the field towards the main road and noting that since the bombing no buses or anything else had come from that direction.

And then at last he appeared, running towards us through the garden of one of the houses occupied by the soldiers, looking a bit the worse for wear. He was on the bus that was just a few feet from where the bomb had exploded in the road and on which the driver had been killed. He did not come straight home down the main road because it was blocked by debris and he had had to find a way round it. His clothes were full of small burn holes where hot metal had landed on him but he was otherwise unhurt and seemed to be not too upset by his experience either.

On the way home on the bus he had been sitting next to Duggy who was at the same school and whose back garden abutted ours. Where was Duggy? 鈥淚 think he was hurt and they were looking after him鈥�. During the afternoon Duggy鈥檚 mum came to the house and there was a long conversation in the kitchen before Mum came into the front room to tell us that Duggy had been killed by the bomb. Duggy was the same age as Ted, thirteen years old.

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