大象传媒

In 1941 I was attending St. Simons Infant and Junior School at Simonside in South Shields. On this particular and fateful day, it was during our school play-time period, that our attention was to be drawn to the sound of an aeroplane, which was seen to come from behind some clouds, heading towards our school. While we all excitedly watched this plane, we were to notice something falling away from it. We all stood and watched as this object was seen to pass immediately above and across the school yard and hit the ground some few hundred yards beyond the school.
Suddenly, there was this terrific explosion, and I can vividly remember to this day, falling on my backside, whether by shock or the blast from the explosion, I'm not sure, but there I clearly saw something like huge lengths of timber and clumps of clay etc being hurtled high into the air. We were eventually herded to safety by our Teachers, and some minutes later the air-raid sirens were sounded.

Coincidently and later in 1989 I came across a copy of a Luftwaffe Target Map, printed in my local newspaper "Newcastle Evening Chronicle" in their war edition. The map shows Tyne Dock and railway sidings, and also on this map was my old St. Simons School. When I look at this map I often wonder if this lone raider was actually intending to hit the school, where all us kids were out playing, or some other target as depicted on the map. Whichever it was, I'm very glad he missed.
With the above newspaper's permission, I have included a copy the map, marked up to highlight the school in relation to the approximate point of the exploding bomb.

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