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A German plane had got into trouble over Crawley and had not got rid of its bombs. The pilot off loaded his bombs — one landed on the post office, 2 on the Church of England school off the Ifield Road. This happened about 8 in the morning.

One bomb landed on the air raid shelter at the infant school and the other landed in the playground of the upper school. The caretakers were blown across the playground.

I was doing my piano practice at the time and the plane came back and fired off its cannons. There were 2 big explosions and my mother came rushing into the room, knocked me off the stool and we both landed up under the dining room table.

When we came to, we got up and could hear some heavy breathing coming from the shop at the front of the house. A man who had been cycling past had been blown in through the front door of the shop and was lying on the shop floor.

Luckily he seemed to be unhurt and cycled on his way.

We couldn’t sleep in the shop for a few days as there were holes in our roof and we had to go to many different schools, finally ending up at the Council school in Robinson Road. They never did rebuild the infant school.

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