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Rosemary Stacey remembers the bomb dropping on Reading

I was eleven years old and on my way home to The Star public house where I lived. I was carrying a jug of hot soup which I had made at school. The siren suddenly went and I went into Shergolds newsagents which was next to the bridge at Duke Street. Mrs. Shergold tried to get me to go down to her basement but I was very reluctant. I saw a German plane with a black cross on it drop a bomb on the town. I was amazed to see it.

Then I heard and saw ambulances going to the mortuary which was just off of Duke Street down Star Lane and I saw people with buckets.

My mother hadn’t heard a thing. She was in the Odeon cinema and the lights just flickered. She realised what had happened when she came out — she was frantic to find out what had happened to me and very relived to find out I was OK.

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