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PETWORTH SCHOOL BOMBING
On the morning of Tuesday 29 September 1942 tragedy
struck Petworth, a small village in West Sussex.
It was a normal day, and the Petworth Boy’s School was
full of children and lessons were underway. No air-raid siren was sounded when a
lone German Junkers JU88 dropped its load on the school while heading home.
The school wasn’t the intended target, and the bombs were
meant to fall on Petworth House where troops were stationed.
Twenty-eight children, aged between seven and twelve, and two teachers were killed along with two people who worked in the nearby laundry.
John Exall, a pupil, recalled the event, “At break time I was playing around in the cloakroom when the first bomb dropped. I remember seeing the dust fall from the ceiling. I ran to get out of the building but was told to go the other way as we had been told there was an escape route through the laundry into the tunnel that went into Petworth Park, but that was not to be as the bomb fell on the laundry too. There were two more bombs and by that time I don't remember much more as I was buried under the rubble. I came to and heard a lot of voices and realised that I couldn't move except for one arm, which I managed to push up through the rubble.”
The original school building no longer exists but there is a plaque with the inscription, ‘This memorial marks the site of the Petworth Boys School destroyed by enemy action Michaelmas 1942 with the tragic loss of two teachers and twenty-eight pupils forever remembered.’
Just a short walk from the original site is Petworth
Horsham Road Cemetery where twenty-seven of the children and the two teachers
are buried in a communal grave. The grave bears the inscription, ‘In Loving
Memory of the headmaster, teacher and boys who lost their lives when Petworth
Boys School was bombed on 29th September 1942.’
On the day they were buried, Canadian soldiers, who had
been stationed nearby and helped with the rescue efforts, carried the coffins
to the grave.
The Cemetery, which dates from Victorian times, was overgrown and in need of some attention when I visited a few years ago but is still worth a visit.
STRETCHER RAILINGS
In the years before the start of World War Two the
British Government formed the Air Raid Precautions (ARP), later to become the
Civil Defence Service, whose role during the war was to protect civilians from
air-raids. Among their many tasks was ensuring the blackout was adhered to,
handing out gas masks and helping people to the shelters.
One of the tools used by the ARP were the emergency
stretchers for transporting those injured during the bombing raids to safety.
The Government had anticipated that this was one of the items that would be
required and by the summer of 1939 more than 150,000 had been produced in
places including Hertfordshire and the West Midlands and distributed to local
authorities. Eventually more than 600,000 would be produced.
These stretchers, which were very basic with just two
steel poles, wire mesh and curved supports to keep them off the ground and make
it easy for them to be picked up, were easy and quick to construct and easier
than wooden or canvas stretchers to clean and disinfect.
The war effort saw London’s many housing estates stripped of their metal railings for use in the construction of weaponry and other needs.
Following the end of the war there was a large supply of
these surplus stretchers and London City Council decided to put these to good
use.
It was decided to replace the railings that had been lost
during the war at estates in areas including Brixton, Deptford, Peckham,
Dulwich and, as shown in these photos, Becket House in Tabard Street,
Southwark.
The stretchers were suspended from vertical supports sunk
into concrete and are easy to spot, mainly due to the curved supports section.
Over the years many of these stretchers/railings have rusted, fallen into disrepair and been removed which is a shame. Fortunately, a society was formed to preserve and maintain them. The Stretcher Railing Company was created to raise funding and help local councils and conservation authorities to undertake the complex restoration required. Back in 2017 they created a map showing the locations of the railings.
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As a result of this a number of defences were constructed in the area to prevent a possible landing by the Germans.
You can also still see examples of the slit trenches, large defensive earthworks that could be occupied by between 10 and 20 soldiers.
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Finally, running along the banks of the river are a number of tank traps, known as dragons teeth. Pyramidal anti-tank obstacles constructed of reinforced concrete to impede the movement of tanks and other armoured vehicles.
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At 4.25am on 13 June 1944, a few days after the D-Day Landings, the first V1 (Flying Bomb) fell on Central London. The V1 hit the LNER (London North Eastern Railway) bridge and the houses nearby in Grove Road.
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