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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by volunteer Stan Grosvenor from ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Cleveland on behalf of Norman Anthony Grayston and has been added to the site with his permission. Norman Anthony Grayston fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

One night in 1941 or 1942 a Junkers Bomber approached from the direction of Liverpool and was caught in the beam of a searchlight. The bomber was being chased by two Spitfires.

I had been in the above-ground Air Raid shelter at Brookside, close to the Courtaulds factory at Grimsargh, with my sister Joan, my mum Sarah and dad James. I had slipped the parental gaze and was standing outside the shelter to see what was going on.

The Junkers jettisoned the bomb load to lighten the craft in an attempt to escape our Fighters. One bomb blew in the front of some houses close by the Stone Cross (War Memorial) at Grimsargh; another dropped in a field at Rough Hey farm, apparently landing in a seam of running sand and was not found, either then or subsequently, and the third landed at Cowell’s farm where it exploded — right in the middle of the midden. Everywhere about was covered with a large stinking splatter of you know what! Fortunately the shelter was not too close.

The Bomber was eventually brought down by the Spitfires on Haslingden Moor.

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