Canterbury Incendiary Bomb Incident

Location 144 Wincheap, Canterbury
Memories of WW2

In June1941 Canterbury was blitzed: a raid which we learned many years on to be one of the Baedeker Raids. At that time, at a tender age of 10 with my brother Dennis aged 11, we wandered the smoking ruins at will. Our new school, Wincheap Primary, was burnt to the ground and so we had free time to wander. Many incendiary bombs fell in and around the hop gardens and to my brother’s delight he found unexploded incendiaries which he proceeded to accumulate in an empty sandbag. This parcel of hell, he dragged along on the end of a piece of rope. After a while he had a change of heart, and abandoned all except one, which he carried home. A large letter ‘A’ was stencilled on the side of this bomb.
Brother Dennis with the aid of father’s vice (unknown to father of course, who on the other side of the wall was busy hairdressing) calmly dismantled the bomb into its component parts and poured the grey powder into a heap in our yard. Attempts to ignite this stuff with matches were disappointingly unsuccessful, and parents were none too pleased.
Some weeks later we started makeshift schooling again and while home for lunch I was called by big brother Dennis to father’s vice wherein Dennis had clamped the detonator. He handed me a hammer and said “hit it”. Even at 10 years old, I wasn’t that daft and refused, however, Dennis fished out a pen nib, (this was years before ball points), placed the point on to the copper detonator and again said “hit it”, which I did. The tip of the nib pierced the copper and quivered.”Hit it harder Ken” , I did , — what followed was a tremendous bang, a fragment of metal seared across my forehead. Father, together with a customer still with the hair dressing sheet around his front burst through the door. But it was all over.
With a scratch on my forehead and ears ringing, Brother Dennis and I returned to afternoon school.
We learnt later that the letter ‘A’ on the incendiary bomb indicated that it was an explosive device.

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