The unborn baby of the Bank Row bombing
Recorded 3 years ago
About this recording
George Heppel's mother was caught up in the bombing of Bank Row in July 1940 - and George was too, "in a roundabout way", as he explains in this short recording.
George was born in September that year, so his mother would have been six or seven months pregnant at the time of the devastating air raid in which 15 people lost their lives, most of them children.
George explains how his mother, Elizabeth, and his auntie had been staying at his granny's house in Bank Row.
"They were all in the front room sitting and they were having a yarn and my granny went through to make a cup of tea," he says. "She gave them a shout to come through, and through they came. And they weren't long at their tea, if they got seated at all, when the bomb went off and the whole front of the building fell."
Contributors
Photos
Harry Gray
