The Docks in the Second World War
Black Saturday (4)
G: That afternoon, around five o'clock, I went outside the house. I'd heard the aircraft, and it was very exciting, because the first formations were coming over without any bombs dropping, but very, very majestic, terrific, and I had no thought that they were actually bombers.
Then from that point on I was well aware, because bombs began to fall, and shrapnel was going along King Street, dancing off the cobbles.
Then the real impetus came, in so far as the suction and the compression from the high-explosive blasts just pulled you and pushed you, and the whole of this atmosphere was turbulating so hard that, after an explosion of a nearby bomb, you could actually feel your eyeballs being sucked out. I was holding my eyes to try and stop them going.
And the suction was so vast, it ripped my shirt away and ripped my trousers. Then I couldn't get my breath, the smoke was like acid and everything round me was black and yellow. And these bombers just kept on and on, the whole street was rising and falling.'
That night Len went to a street shelter and was shocked by what he saw the next morning:
'I went to see how our house was, and when I got there the front door was lying back, and the glass of the windows had fallen in, and I could see the top of the house had virtually disappeared.
Inside, everything was blown to pieces, you could see it all by the red glow reflecting from the fires raging outside. Then I looked out the back and suddenly realised that where my father's shed and workshop used to be was just a pile of rubble, bricks.
Then I saw two bodies, two heads sticking up. I recognised one head in particular: it was a Chinese man, Mr Say, he had one eye closed, and then I realised that he was dead.'
Len Jones.
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Contact
Nigel Sagar
Design and Technology
London Borough of Barking
and Dagenham
Email: nigel.sagar@lbbd.gov.uk
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