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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by a volunteer from ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Berkshire on behalf of Pete Simmons and has been added to the site with his permission. Pete Simmons fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was only a wee lad, about seven or eight years old. My brother had just come home from school and had popped out to the outside loo, which was attached to the house. As he was coming out he saw the German plane — the Luftwaffe. It was flying along the railway line parallel to my house, machine gunning. Then I remember hearing two or three bangs, I didn’t see it dropping anything, but later that day we heard through the grapevine that the school had been bombed. As the Luftwaffe flew over, machine guns blazing, me, my brother and my ten year old sister sat in the front room. It was over within minutes so there was no time to get to the shelter, which was underground in the neighbours’ garden. It had room for four families.

It was late afternoon, early evening when they dropped the bombs. Several children and a teacher were still at school and so were killed. The church was also bombed. Both buildings — the national school for 11 — 14 year olds and St. John’s Church were completely destroyed. They were less than a quarter of a mile from my home.

The next day we visited the sites and collected what firewood we could find using an old pram. I was pleased my brother had come home a bit earlier from school that day so he hadn’t been killed during the attack. My eldest brother was away at boarding school.

When you are so young you don’t realise the implications of what’s happening. The German planes would often fly over on their way to bomb Coventry, and the heart of industrial Britain.

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