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During the war years I lived at 20 Mutley Road, Mannamead in Plymouth. Just after the April raids of 1941 I was 12 rising 13.

On one particular occasion, it was early evening about 7pm, the house was shaken by a very powerful explosion. I remember the windows rattling so it could not have been any later in the year as the windows had been blown out by then. The explosion came for the direction of Thorn Park and so I went to try and find the cause. I went out into the back lane which separated Mutley Road from the house on the lower side of Thorn Park.

A short distance from my back garden lay a pile of intestines and I wondered who would but such material there. The back lane opened into the lower corner of Thorn Park and there I met the park keeper who was carrying a large cubic biscuit tin.

He told me he was collecting pieces of body and would I help him. The first piece I picked up was a thumb and I recall it gave me a very funny feeling because it had been stripped off the bone and did not feel like a thumb at all.

I cannot remember now how long I helped the park keeper but eventually I found part of an arm which would not fit into the tin.

It was at this point that the enormity of what I was doing dawned on me together with the realisation that the intestines had also come from a human body. I became aware of the enormous power of the high explosive and how it could render human beings into such small fragments.

I began to shake and knew that I could not continue and had to get away. I could not go home and ended up in Central Park. I never told my parents, I did not know how to. For a while I had recurring nightmares until I could put the memories out of my mind.

I did not get to see the site of the explosion which I think occurred in the grounds of a house called the ‘Hollies’, not far from Henders Corner. I was later told that several soldiers were killed trying to diffuse a bomb.

I was evacuated with my school to Penzance shortly afterwards and this helped me to come to terms with the horror I had experienced.

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