大象传媒

Name Pat Coombs
Event The Loss of a Lancaster
Civilian
I lived with my parents, brother, and two sisters in Moreland Street Roker Sunderland. My father worked at the Fulwell Road Bus Depot, in his spare time was a keen model maker He had just finished a Model of a Lancaster Bomber, which was his pride and joy.
This model had pride of place in the house. It stood on a round table in the centre of our living room.
One night my father was on night shift at the bus depot when he saw what was called a Purple in the sky. This was a circular movement in the sky made by a searchlight before the siren was sounded and was used to indicate that an Air Raid was imminent. On the night in question my father saw the Purple and immediately came home to collect us all, and to take us to the bus depot where there was a good Air raid shelter. Before we left the house it was my job as the eldest child to collect the 鈥淒eeds Box鈥� which was a biscuit tin containing the deeds to the house and other important documents. While we were in the shelter an incendiary bomb was dropped on our house, it went through the roof, through the ceiling of our living room and demolished the model Lancaster on our living room table, together with half the table, then through the floorboards and into the foundations. My uncle who had served in the Great War was in the house at the time and had refused to come with us to the shelter saw that the bomb in the foundations had no exploded.
He got out of his chair and quickly got a spadeful of coal dust from the coal house and covered the bomb with it.
My father鈥檚 model was completely destroyed, but I still have the table today only now it鈥檚 a semi circular one.

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