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This story was gathered at Bedford’s VE/VJ Celebration event at Castle Mound and submitted to the People’s War site by Gillian Ridley for Three Counties Action on behalf of Mr Noel Steel and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

It was the 23rd July 1942,
I lived in Wendover Drive; I was 5 and a half at the time.
My Mother was walking me to school along Rosamund Road; we were going to Goldington Road Infants School.

At about 8.30 — 8.45 am we were nearly there, I seem to remember that it was a lovely summers day.
We saw flying over 3/4 mile away an aircraft heading southwards, it was quite low about 1000ft, to our surprise we saw four objects fall from it, couldn’t quite understand it as Bedford was not a prime target. He was probably on his way home, as he was coming from the North, having not completed his planned raid.
He was a lone bomber and I now know a Dornier 217.
Then we heard the air raid siren, we hurried along on to school and went into the shelters, which was all a bit irrelevant by then.

It wasn’t until I got home that evening that my Mother told me that one of those four bombs fell on our sweet / tobacco shop in Midland Road next to the Assembly Hall. Normally my Grandfather was in the shop by 8.30am ready for the day but for some reason he was a little bit late leaving from home. He was only 100yds away when it went up luckily he was uninjured.

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