大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Don and Betty Tempest of the Lancshomeguard on behalf of James Stansfield and added to the site with his permission.

Who would want to bomb Bacup? No one perhaps. It was just a German bomber, running on one engine, returning from Barrow-in-Furness, whose pilot, with two bombs left, needed to gain height to cross the Pennines. It would be 1941 or 1942.

The sirens had already sounded three times that night. My brother Alan, younger by three years, huddled on the cellar steps with mother and father each time. About 4am, they went off again. We all went back to sleep. Dad had to be up at 6am to travel to work at a munitions factory. Then...BANG! The explosion was terrific. The silence that followed, almost as deafening, lasted probably two seconds. Then all the debris - slates, glass, earth -came down on the roofs.

I suppose the two bombs were only 500 pounders, but they made quite big craters. One bomb dropped at the top of Hannah Street, a short"Unadopted" thorough fare with only 13house, on open ground. The other bomb fell in the garden of a house on the modern Council estate at the junction with Tong Lane (I can't remember the name of the road).

So, fortunately, there were no casualties. I can remember the crowds who came to inspect the craters. Well, it was the most exciting thing that had happened in Bacup for quite a while.
END.

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