Dear Mr. Fowell (Eric)

You won't know or remember me as such but you and Mrs. Pat Jenkins kindly signed the Thousand Years of Rushden book for me when it came on sale at the Queen St rooms.

I see in the ET, that you would like to hear any memories of the Rushden bombings. So I thought that I would write you these few lines on what I remember.

In late 1939 my family moved from Irchester to Rushden so that my father could be nearer to his work at Grensons on the Cromwell Road - he was a Heel Trimmer there during the day and did fire watch and boilerman duty there on a rota at nights.

We lived next door to the factory in one of two houses owned by Mr. Green of Knuston. (These houses were demolished some years ago now, and their site is now a car park.)

On seeing your article in the ET, I was glad to see that you gave the date of the High Street bombing i.e. Oct 4^th 1940. Now I don't' know why? But I have always had the date of Oct 3^rd for the raid in my mind. Ha Ha. But this may be due to my memory - which is not good on dates. [but he was right! Ed]

I was 10 years old at the time of the raid and stood talking to my mother in the passage way to the front door, when the bombs hit. There was a very feint "Whir" sound, and a milli second later a Whump Whump Whump. The ground trembled and shook and the house rattled. "Good Lord" my mother says - and the next second we are out the front door and the garden gate. Looking across the road and between the houses of Mr and Mrs Ekins (shop owners) and Mr and Mrs Lord (taxi service garage) we saw that the Town centre had appeared to have erupted like a volcano. A huge cloud of dust and smoke was rolling up and spreading towards us. (The square water tower tank at the Co-op factory in Rectory Road actually vanished in the haze for some seconds.)

There were puffs of dust on the house roofs in Portland Road and a lady called to my mother, and they were talking to each other across the road. A minute or so later, a man came riding around the corner from Queen Street on an old sit up and beg bike. And I shall never forget that man’s face. Eyes staring, he shouts to my mother. "Don't for God’s sake go down there lady". They have hit the school and there's dead in the High Street. With that, he rode into the dust haze - without stopping, up Cromwell Road.

When I reached the High Street it was a hive of activity. There was a police car outside the Ritz (this moved off in a hurry when I passed it). A man in overalls was stopping folk going down by the school from the corner of Alfred Street. The school was exactly like it appears in the photo in the Rushden 1000 years book, with rubble all over the roadway of course, from the school and the factory. There was also bits of wadding and stuffing blowing around I recall. It came from Gramshaw's furniture van, that had a mattress in it -the bombs split the back of the van and burst a mattress. I heard later that the van still ran and moved under its own power, (but I never saw that). Over the road at the factory were some men looking up and pointing etc at the roof, the bomb had blown the body of one man up through the roof and draped him over a beam and it must have taken quite a while before the ladders long enough to fetch him down arrived. I was told the man's name at the time, but forgot it years ago now, sad to say.

A man working at John White’s in Newton Road, had a son at the school. He ran from the factory only minutes after the bomb hit - he found his son wandering dazed and crying in the road. When he snatched him up and told him "Alright, you're alright now" the boy told him "I've lost my shoe Dad - My shoe's gone."

Another little girl was found covered in dust sitting on a school toilet crying but unhurt.

I tried to go down to Duck Street, but was turned back outside Cave's factory by an ARP man. So I went back and along the High Street. Had to cross to the other side of the road at West Street because there was a lorry and men there. The West Street was quite badly damaged - as you know, but for some reason there's no great mention of West Street when folk talk about the High Street bombing. At the fish and chip shop there was terrible damage to the Duck Street end of the building. The couple living there both died, the man was crushed by a fallen beam, and his wife was found buried by wreckage in the kitchen area. They covered the man's body with a tarpaulin cover from a fire pump, (there was a fire post down near the Baths.)

In later years, I worked with Mr. Sidney Nutter of Robinson Road, he was an AFS man and he told me that when the lady at the fish shop was found her body had glass shards in it and they lifted her using straps used with rolled hoses. Its' a crying shame that there was no warning sirens sounded for any of the Rushden bombing incidents. Had folk been in the shelters the death toll would have been much much less.

The little brick shelter at the fish shop survived the bomb "Perfectly in tact" and stood on the site for a good number of years.

Going to the "Vic" I only got to the stables near the bridge and was stopped by a policeman, so stood there with a man and woman and watched for a little while the men working outside the Vic. There was a lorry there and a car or two. The traffic was single file directed by a traffic policeman. There was a Low Bridge traffic sign near the stables, and its metal post was so riddled with shrapnel holes from the bomb it looked like steel lace in places. Folks used to put bus tickets, fag packets, sweet wrappers etc etc. in the pole, like a waste paper basket. Later on in the war I remember coming out of The Theatre - and the pole was on fire and pouring smoke. Ha Ha, someone had put a lighted fag or match in the pole and the smoke was blowing everywhere.

Mr. Ron Quenell who had a fish and chip shop on The Cromwell Road was a very close friend of my father told us an amusing story about the High Street bombing. A friend of Ron's was a manager of a butchers shop in the High Street (at the bottom of Orchard Place if I remember a'right?). When the bombs exploded - a little elderly lady at his shop was frightened rather and said "Can I stay here a while butcher" - "Yes" he said -"you sit in here and you'll be safe as houses" and he sat her on a stool in the fridge room. Then in all the rushing about and activity in the Street he forgot that she was in there for about half an hour or more, from what Ron said. Of course the butcher rushed back into the shop and opened the fridge door wondering what he was going to find after the state the lady was in when he put her in there. Ha Ha, He told Ron that the fridge must have cooled her right down because when he opened the door, she was cool as a cucumber and said "Thank you butcher - it was nice and quiet in there and I really feel better." Then she walked out.

It astounded the butcher, who expected her to come out completely demented.

The Dornier circled Rushden, some folk claimed twice, before making its bomb run. I still have the flight fins of an incendiary that it dropped on one circuit that it made. The fire bomb fell in the allotment garden of Mr. Archie Dobbs who lived in Queen Street, his son Peter was a very good friend of mine. Mr. Dobbs allotment was between Allen Road and Blinco Road, (all now built over). The bomb came down through a Victoria plum tree - broke some branches and shrivelled and withered some when it burnt. Mr. Dobbs language was unrepeatable when he found it. There was a hole in the ground with all white powder ash around it under the tree. So we got a spade and trowel and dug down. The fins came up first and then a lot of white ash, and then we found the nose of the bomb. It was silver about the size and shape of a small tin of condensed milk, stamped with a little German eagle, writing and numbers etc. Pete had the nose part and I had the fins which still has a little of the white ash visible in them from the burning. The fins were grey green colour, but started to rust and corrode from the burning so I cleaned them well and painted them with black enamel- which preserved them. Also I have a shrapnel fragment from the Rushden bombings. It came from an Oxo tin full of shrapnel that was going rusty (and I had lost interest then) so it was dumped. It was Rushden shrapnel for certain - but whether it's from the High Street bombing or the Roberts Street bombing —now after all these years - I do not know. It only survived because I painted it and kept it with the fins at the time.

After the High Street raid of course, on Nov 19^th 1940 came the Roberts Street bombing. Again there was no sirens sounded - but we did hear the Whistle and Whine of the bomb (or bombs) on the way down and was able to scramble for cover. We all sat talking and having an evening cup of tea in the living room, present were my Mum and Dad, my sisters Olive, Joan and baby Wendy. Also there was Hazel Brown a friend of my sister Olive. Then myself and Bess our collie dog. No wireless on, which proved lucky as it allowed us to hear the bombs coming early. Everyone seemed to sense something coming at the same time and fell silent for a second. Then my father leapt up and shouted to my mother "In the pantry gal quick" and all the girls, mum and the dog crammed into the pantry in seconds. Ever since then it's always puzzled me how so many people and a dog got into such a small pantry under the stairs so quickly.

I reached in and turned the gas off at the meter, then threw myself on the kitchen floor, and held the pantry door shut with my knees (never had time to latch it or fiddle with the latch.) I lay with my head just below the low step down from the living room, and could see my father throw himself to the floor and cover his head with his arms. He had turned out the living room light but we had a fire in the grate - which lit the room. By this time, the bomb (or bombs?) sounded like a steam train passing over the roof and the air vibrated. Then the bombs exploded, and very strange to say there was no "Boom" that you expect from a bomb. I felt a split second sort of a push and went stone deaf. The ground shuddered and shook in waves - and the walls of the living room moved in and out just as if they were made of rubber, not brick.

It was amazing and at the same time my father floated up from the floor still flat and stiff like a plank. It was just like magicians float ladies in mid air on stage. My father then thumped back down to the floor and scrambled to his feet. Then my hearing returned and I heard things thud down in the roadway outside, then a big crash of breaking glass as the windows of Mr. Ekins shop fell out on the comer of Portland Road. The sound from the pantry really worried me and Dad from the look of concern on his face. So it was a tremendous relief when the door opened and they all crawled out near helpless with laughter. My mother told us that we had all forgotten about the onions drying on the pantry floor. They were all crammed into the pantry like sardines and the onions were agony to sit on and they acted like ball bearings. Someone began to giggle and then laugh and because everyone was struggling around in a heap, Bess the dog thought that it was some sort of game and began to jump up and down on everybody and lick them. Mum said she heard the thump and rumble of the bomb but they were so distracted they hardly had the time to notice it all that much. Thinking that they might try and bomb Green's factory next door to us, we decided to go to the underground shelter in the rear factory yard. My mother and all the girls stank to high heaven of onions so they went to the shelter all very whiffey.

The Robert Street bomb must have sent debris miles high, because when we left the house, bits of wreckage was still falling from the sky and landing on roofs and in the road. We heard it wrecked our Newton Road school. I crept in to take a look and our headmaster Mr. Sherwood caught me crunching around on the glass etc. "Out you go Billy" he says "and tell your mother that a blackboard with news and information will be placed by the school gates every school day". (We never went to school for weeks.).

The school lost a pupil in the Aug 2/3^rd night bombing in 1942. The bombs missed Rushden and exploded in fields off the Bedford Road, but the parachute of a flare canister that the bomber dropped didn't open and it crashed through the roof of a house in York Road. It smashed through the roof, went down the stairs, hit the gas meter and exploded. It killed Mr and Mrs Abbott and their daughter, a school friend of my sister.

The father saved his son Asher (a school friend of mine whose face was badly burnt) by dangling him, then dropping him from a window into the garden, but Mr. Abbott was so badly burnt himself he later died. I never did see Asher again after the fire, he did come back and visit Rushden badly scarred but I was in the Army at the time so didn't meet him. He asked about me though, when he met one of our friends.

I often wonder how many photos of the Rushden bombings were taken. Years ago I recall seeing ones of the fish and chip shop, Roberts Street and Cave's factory but I haven't seen them in recent years.

Also years ago there was a photograph of an ME 109 German fighter plane taken on a market square with a Wellington bomber for a Savings Week or some such. The photo was taken either in Wellingborough or Northampton, I cannot remember now. But anyhow that ME 109 was the one that they put on show on the playground of Moor Road school. (You no doubt will remember that?) Ha Ha, we haunted that ME 109 while it was there and sat in it a number of times. But no photos seems to have been taken at Rushden leastways, I have not heard or seen of one. I see in today's Telegraph in a Tim Morton article that you are getting a good number of replies to your appeal for the bombing memories, and one from Mr. Ted Cutmore of Alfred Street who kept the cycle shop. If I remember aright I think that Ted had a brother with him at the shop, I cannot remember his name, but am sure two brothers ran the shop that was opposite Clipson's.

While on the subject of Alfred Street again. I see that the crack up the back wall of the Ritz was never repaired and is till there. Sid Nutter the AFS man who I worked with told me that that crack was started by the bombing 1940.

We worked together at Warrens the butchers for a number of years until made redundant when the shop closed. Prior to that Sid had a milkman dairy business in Newton Road for a number of years, opposite Newton Road school.

Well, this just will not do, here I am scribbling on and on and am no doubt boring you to tears by now, so will draw these lines to a close now and get them into an envelope and ready for posting when next we go shopping on Friday morning. Its really surprising when you look back to the bombings, what you remember. Things and details, what folk said and told you all those years ago come back to mind.

Has a book on the bombings been ever written? I cannot recall one at all.

I don't think that anyone has researched the Rushden raids in detail and memories fade. Ha Ha, I knew names etc. years ago that I cannot recall today no matter how I try.