Bombardment

By the spring of 1944 the bombing raids over Germany by the Allied Forces became a regular exercise. We could hear the roar of the heavily bomb-laden aircraft flying overhead, they were in formations of hundreds. They just droned on and on. It was a frightening sound as it was a menace you could not see. They usually came at night hidden by low clouds to protect them from anti-aircraft attack. Now and again a stray bomb would land somewhere near causing death and destruction. However the real danger from bombing attacks over Belgium came after Easter 1944 as the Allied Forces were preparing for D Day. Railway depots, bridges and other strategic locations were the targets but sometimes things went wrong and bombs would land off course in residential neighbourhoods and kill civilians.

One such raid was aimed at a nearby railway complex on Easter Monday 1944. I remember it so vividly because I have never felt so afraid in my life. It had been a beautiful spring day and we had been on an enjoyable visit to friends in a nearby village. We returned home late and had just retired to bed when all of a sudden the sky lit up as clear as daylight. We got out of bed, opened the window and looked out. There were hundreds of bright flares floating down from the sky above. We just thought how pretty they looked, like a fireworks display. Then we became aware of the aircraft flying overhead. Without warning, the first powerful explosion made the earth shudder and a blinding flash rendered us almost paralyzed with fright. I don’t know how we managed to descend the stairs but we got no further than the hallway when all hell let loose. It was raining bombs in a continuous thundering succession. The entire house was shaking, the windows rattling and the blinding flashes of light came with each explosion. Each time a bomb hit the earth the impact felt like a punch to my heart. I was frozen numb with sheer terror. We were in our nightclothes and in bare feet. As we stood in a corner of the house, my mother prayed out loud, calling for protection from all the saints in heaven. I held my arms wrapped tightly around her, partly to comfort her and also to support myself upright as my legs shook uncontrollably. The bombing only lasted about fifteen minutes, but it seemed like hours. When it was over there was an eerie silence for several seconds. Then we heard the voices of our neighbours as they came out of their houses into the street. Everyone was in a state of shock. Some people were numb, some were talking excitedly about the experience, and many of them were crying.

We looked around for damage. Miraculously there were only broken windows, no one was harmed, but there were plenty of shattered nerves. Our immediate neighbourhood had been spared. The nearest bombs had fallen about a half a mile away on a trail behind our housing estate. They had missed the factory they were aiming for and had left huge craters in the fields nearby. There had been a direct hit on a small pub in a nearby village, killing the landlord and his wife. Fortunately the customers had all left at the first sound of the attack. The bombers just missed the Don Bosco Seminary School for boys as they flew along their departing route. We could hardly believe we had not been hit as the bombs had sounded so close, as if we were in the middle of it all.

The next day we found out that most of the damage had been on the other side of the river Schelde in the village where we had visited our friends the previous day. Many homes were flattened and there were numerous casualties, however our friends escaped with just broken windows, cracked walls and shattered roof tiles. Among the dead was an entire family. The daughter had been a friend of mine who sat at the same bench as me in the factory where I worked.

The ordeal of the attack had left us all nervous wrecks. Each time we heard an aeroplane after that we were all panic-stricken. There were numerous air raids in preparation for the liberation campaign but never again did they come so close. I marvel at the endurance of Londoners who had to put up with unrelenting air raids from dusk till dawn during Hitler’s savage assault on Britain in the summer of 1940.