大象传媒

"This story was submitted to the People's War site by Anna Jones on behalf of Reg Baker and has been added to the site with his permission. Reg Baker fully understands the site's terms and conditions."

It happened on March 3rd 1943. The air raid warning went. People walked to the tube - that was the big shelter then. My father was in the outside toilet at the time. I said, shall I go on Dad? And he said no, wait for me. My mother stayed down the tube day and night. It was a community down there. After the warning, as we were making our way to the shelter, suddenly new rocket guns opened up over our local pub so everybody got into the shelter and started panicking. My father and I lay down in the road. Then we got up and ran. There were people panicking thinking the Blitz has started again which had been over for a year then. As we got to the entrance to the shelter, by a split second decision we changed our mind and ran across the road to another shelter and in 90 seconds 173 people got crushed to death on 19 steps. A woman with a baby fell first and everybody piled on top. At the top of the shelter there was a 25 watt bulb - everything was black out.

The fact is they didn't inform the local people that they were just trying out these guns. My sister came in late, thought the ground was very soft but she was on the top of bodies and the wardens pulled her from the top - she's alive today. In our class at school there was the Mead brothers - both killed - their sister, their mum and dad and their gran. Three generations wiped out.

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