大象传媒

This story was written by my Grandfather William Bradford (1907-1997). In 1940 he volunteered for the army and was drafted into the Royal Engineers.

"I was in the Royal Engineers and stationed at Gibraltar. Our job was in the newly blasted tunnels, mixing and laying concrete by the ton.

One very big job which was assigned to our company was the construction of a huge concrete stairway which ultimately would connect every tunnel from the bottom to the top of the Rock.

The concrete was mixed outside the Rock on North Front, loaded onto a "dobbin" and pushed along rails for a distance of 200 yards or so to the foot of our stairway.

Then, like a chain gang, we bucketed the concrete up the stairway which, of course, grew as time went by.

At the foot of the stairway was a separate chamber in which were stored all the gelignite detonators, fuses,etc, used for the blasting operations. I suppose we had constructed about 350 treads on this stairway when it happened. The date --January 31 1941.

The Black Watch Regiment were manning such gun positions in the Rock as were completed, the Royal Canadian Engineers were blasting the tunnels and we in our Company were hard at work on our stairway.

It was payday and our Company was ordered to parade one hour earlier than usual for pay at our barracks, two miles away. We knocked off work to make our way to the waiting transports outside the Rock. It was nice to get out of the gloom and dust into the brilliant sunshine again.

We had all got out of the Rock when ---whoosh! We were bowled over like straw before the wind. It went dark --the sun was hidden--and then pieces of rock started falling all about us. There had been an explosion in the Rock.

Never shall I forget the scene that confronted us when we re-entered the tunnels. Several dead and badly injured; steel helmets as flat as this piece of paper I am writing on and the stench of explosives.

We helped the injured and carried ammunition out, for there were several fires. Apparently the explosion had occurred in the very chamber at the foot of our stairway. This had, in fact, taken the full force of the explosion and from bottom to top not one tread was left. The stairway, in fact, was nearly as smooth as a plastered wall.

We afterwards found our "dobbin" lodged in the roof of a building 200 yards outside the Rock. The blast had sent it along the rails to hurtle through the entrance to the tunnel and go through mid-air to the roof of this building.

Whoever it was that day that altered the time of our pay parade on that day certainly saved the lives of about 300 men; the state of our stairway proved that fact. To me it seemed a miracle."

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