KS3 / KS4 / GCSE History: The German bombardment of Britain's North East coast in WW1

In August 1914 Britain had gone to war against Germany.

Only five months later the enemy brought the war to Britain.

On the North East coast of England the morning of December the 16th 1914 was still and misty.

The first signs of anything unusual were the flashes coming from unidentified ships several miles out to sea.

One family realised what was happening when a German shell fragment struck the house and smashed into the front of the family alarm clock, stopping it forever at three minutes past eight.

It was the start of a ferocious bombardment.

The people of Hartlepool felt the full horror of modern war.

Homes were death traps, but so too were these streets. The German shells burst on impact sending shards of screaming hot metal in all directions at hundreds of miles an hour.

It was the first successful big attack on Britain since 1066; many thought the nightmare of a German invasion had become reality. Terrified children had simply no idea what was happening.

Violet:
All we could hear is bang, this noise bangs, but see it was far out to sea, it didn’t sound like bombs dropping against here.

Jeremy:
What did you think the sound was?

Violet:
We didn’t know, me older sister, me, me brother’s children are upstairs and she said “I think somebody’s beating their carpets”, that’s what she said. So anyway she goes out and she finds out, she says “Oh mum”, she come running back, “Mum the Germans are here, they’re on the beach and everybody’s running off, running, running away." I went upstairs and looked out the bedroom window, I could see big flashes.

Jeremy:
Out at sea?

Violet:
Flashes out at sea, yeah.

Jeremy:
And how were people reacting?

Violet:
Oh, crying and some of them crying, running with the prams and, er anyway there was hardly anybody left in Hartlepool, it’s all up the country.

Jeremy:
People were scurrying along outside, were they?

Violet:
And then somebody come and said “Oh, somebody’s had his head blew off”. Well, that frightened me…

Jeremy:
Mm…

Violet:
somebody had their head blew off.

Jeremy:
Mm. What did you, do you remember what you felt, you were seven years old?

Violet:
I was horrified, I thought they were coming any minute to the to the door to take us to kill us, I was sitting shivering, I just sat on the end of the bed and I was like that shivering, mm, terrified.

Jeremy:
What, thinking a German might walk through the door?

Violet:
I thought they were coming any minute to take us away, you know, to get us, yeah.

Jeremy:
The children of Hartlepool were among the many victims of Kaiser Wilhelm’s Navy that day. Three members of the Dixon family were killed by a shell as they ran for it holding hands, George, his sister Margaret and their brother Albert, aged seven. Their mother’s leg was blown off.

Suddenly the dead of World War One had different faces, the faces of British children.

For most British people what happened here in the North East that day was a war crime, an atrocity, a line had definitely been crossed, from now on civilians in Britain knew they too could be in mortal danger.