The Central Somerset Gazette 28 Jun 1940 South West Air Raid Victims Five Dead and Many Hurt Fires Started Houses Damaged Remarkable Escapes inc Mr and Mrs S. J. WINTER

Sarah Hawkins Genealogy Site
Newspaper Articles


The Central Somerset Gazette, and The Western Counties' Advertiser. Friday 28 Jun 1940

Page 4 Column 6


SOUTH-WEST AIR RAID VICTIMS.

FIVE DEAD AND MANY HURT.

FIRES STARTED; HOUSES DAMAGED; REMARKABLE ESCAPES.

Monday night's air raid on a South-West town resulted in five dead, 14 seriously injured, and many suffering from cuts and minor injuries. High-explosive and incendiary bombs were dropped, fires started and damage done to private houses.

Two people were killed when a bomb fell in their front garden, blowing out the entire front of the house. A person who lived on the opposite side of the road was also killed, apparently by a bomb splinter, and another neighbour was taken to hospital suffering from severe injuries.

The alarm was sounded at about 12.15 a.m., and the all-clear went some hours later.

Four houses were almost completely demolished, and many houses in the area had windows blown out and slates torn from the roofs, roofs.

HOUSE CRASHES AROUND FAMILY.

A direct hit on two houses in another road in the same district reduced the buildings to rubble. The families occupying these houses had remarkable escapes.

Eight members of one family emerged from their Anderson shelter to find little of their house left. Mr. and Mrs. S. J. WINTER and their five-months-old baby had the experience of hearing their house crash around them. They had taken refuge in a cupboard beneath the stairs, and did not even suffer a scratch.

A house was completely destroyed close to a hospital in the town. Police and A.R.P. workers searched throughout the day among the debris for the bodies of two people missing.

Incendiary bombs started fires at a factory, which was gutted, and a sawmill, while others fell on a church and private houses. Firemen and householders dealt with the bombs easily and efficiently.

Families in the area most affected were warm in their praises of the Anderson shelter. One man said: “I was amazed to find later that a bomb had actually fallen a few houses away.”

BRITAIN'S BIGGEST RAID.

The heaviest Nazi raid on Britain was on Wednesday night last week, when eight civilians lost their lives and at least 60 were injured. More than 100 bombers flew over an area extending from the South Coast up the East Coast to Scotland, the North-West of England, and South Wales. Three raiders were shot down by our fighters, and a fourth was disabled.

One of the enemy bombers unloaded a bomb near the garden of a public house in the South of England. The occupants of the Inn had a narrow escape. The bomb, which was not of very heavy calibre, struck and shattered a wall at the end of the garden, about 20 yards from the house. The landlady's son, a boy of 14, immediately ran to his mother's room and helped to allay the fears of two children as other bombs were heard to explode.

Damage was done to the roof of the house, from which many tiles were dislodged. When daylight came it was seen that the bomb had made a crater about two feet deep. The bombs were the first to be dropped in the district, and there appears to have been no particular objective.


Back to Miscellaneous Page

Back to Home Page






<NOTES: The public house is probably the Nags Head at Thornfalcon. The landlady of the Nags Head Hotel in the 1939 Register was Annie Elizabeth STOKES nee JACOBS, and her son George Robert STOKES was born in 1925 - so he would have been about 15 at the time>