大象传媒

At the age of 11 I was evacuated with Henry Thorton grammar school, Clapham to Chichester where we were integrated into Chichester High School for boys, Kingsham Road. (This was August 1939)
At some time during 1941/42 I was on my way home from school to my lodgings.(which were in Parklands Road, North Chichester) I had walked up South Street and through the precincts of the cathedral, past the Bishops Palace and had reached the corner of Chapel Street, opposite the Bell Tower. Outside the G.P.O was the bus stops for all the destinations around Chichester and at that time of day (4.30PM?) there were plenty of people waiting in queues plus many people in and out of the P.O. The weather was overcast with very low cloud and suddenly with a great noise; a German Junkers 88 bomber appeared out of the mist and nearly hit the Cathedral spire. It circled around the spire and then opened up its machine guns along West Street and at the same time headed over my head towards North Street at practically chimney level. There was a sudden enormous explosion, and up Chapel Street in front of me was a great cloud of smoke and dust accelerating towards me. In Chapel Street at the side of me were marching about a dozen or so soldiers from the barracks. One of them grabbed me and we all laid down against the wall of a building. Red hot shrapnel was falling and hissing in the puddles. There was then the sound of a Pom-pom gun situated on top of the shoe shop on the corner of North and East Street, then another loud explosion followed by the droning dying away.
All this happened very quickly, probably in the space of about 5 minutes. The soldiers then told me that I couldn鈥檛 proceed up Chapel Street and had to go home another way, so I went up North Street. Woolworths, which was about half way up, looked a mess as did an outfitters on the other side of the road.
I found out afterwards that a bomb had dropped on the garage and petrol pumps in Chapel Street which were situated opposite to a primary school and it had left a huge crater and a great loss of life.
The second bomb fell into Woolworths but as the bomber was so low and flying quite fast, the bomb bounced out through the front of the shop hit the road and then bounced through the outfitters and I think finally landed and exploded somewhere between St Martins and Little London, near St Mary鈥檚 hospital.
I think the Pom-pom had damaged the plane and I heard on its way east out of Chichester another gun shot its tail off and it crashed in a field towards Tangmere.

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