大象传媒

This story has been written onto the 大象传媒 People鈥檚 War site by CSV Storygatherer Robin.D.Bailey on behalf of the author Victor Donald Delves. They fully understand the terms and conditions of the site.

It did not seem all that long ago that Redruth had been bombed, in fact it was 20th March 1941, and thinking back to that night, it was my very first encounter with anyone being killed or injured during the war.

I was, at the time, driving a furniture lorry for a well known auctioneer and had that day been to Plymouth to bring a family to Redruth who had, unfortunately, lost their home in the blitz. I well remember the day, for as we finished loading in Plymouth, the Sirens went and my boss Edgar
Rowe said 鈥淟ets get the hell out of here!鈥� When we had unloaded the lorry in Redruth, I took it back to its garage at Pednandrea and on making my way home I heard the drone of a German plane, obviously looking for it鈥檚 target. I can only guess, as others have done since, that the plane was trying to locate Bigford Smiths of Tuckingmill. This well known and established firm used to have vans travelling around to the Cornish tin mines, supplying dynamite and fuses etc.

I think the German plane could not find it鈥檚 target, but decided to drop it鈥檚 bombs, so whilst circling the area between Redruth and Camborne, the pilot saw a train coming from Camborne into Redruth. The Fireman had been stoking coal at the time and the German pilot had seen the flame in the firebox. The aircraft followed and then thinking he could disrupt the railway line, released 11 bombs, all high explosive, which fell in line, but did not do as much damage to the railway as they expected. The unfortunate thing was that it killed 3 men and 3 women, seriously
injured another 7 men and 2 women with a further 3 men and 4 women slighty injured. It demolished 2 houses, one just above the railway station. It also damaged a large number of other houses and business premises.

One of the badly injured was Dick Mathews, a great friend of our family. He was a porter and lived at East End, not far from us. He used to call on my mother each week to collect insurance money, which he did as a side-line.

The evening that the 11 high explosive bombs were dropped, the Redruth Town Band were to have practised at the building at Pednandrea where they kept all their uniforms and instuments. They were lucky they were not there when the bombs fell or they would have met the same fate as the instruments and uniforms which were all destroyed.

Today, a bakery is still there, only yards from the building where the bandsmen practised and used as their store. Just in front of the bakery on the Wesley Street side, there was a large crater in the road. The German pilot had followed the train in a straight line, but the train
entered Redruth Station, then went left into a tunnel, but the bombs went straight on missing the train. The train carried on to the West of England Bacon factory.

There had been a previous incident, in November 1940, when a young boy was seriously injured in Falmouth Road, Redruth, by a German plane that machine-gunned the street.

On the 12th April, 1941, the German bombers were busy again just a few miles from Redruth, when they bombed the Nanskuke aerodrome at Portreath, but this time no one was injured. I remember some of the Polish pilots who flew Westland Whirlwinds at that time, these planes would come in and also take-off at a very high speed.

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