Comments on: The bombing of East Grinstead on 9th July, 1943

By: Derek Bond

Derek Bond — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:20:28 +0000

I was 4 1/2 years old when the cinema was bombed.We lived in a flat next to the fish & chip shop in West Street (Hill ?).I remember watching ( I shouldnt have been ) from the opening to the shelter in the High Street, looking for my dad…there he was hurrying but not so fast as to spill the pint of beer he had just bought ! Next day I and small friends were sifting through the rubble outside the jewellers opposite the cinema..the shutters were blown open.fortunately I was too young to realise the tragedy that had befallen many. East End families were evacuated to East Grinstead whereas I and my half -brother were sent to Tregaron in Wales.

By: shirley king (silverman

shirley king (silverman — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:07:29 +0000

I remember the plane that came down in east grinstead- My auntie used to work for a munitions factory and made me a little plane out of the glass from it and a lot of ladies raided the plane for the parachute to make clothes. I was supposed to have gone to the pictures on that fatefull day but i had a cold so I suppose I was one of the lucky ones. On VE day May 8th we had a big party in the street on MAY 9TH which was my birthday and we had custard Icecream and a real banana not dried

By: Charles Bowers

Charles Bowers — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:21:15 +0000

Family tradition has it that my aunt’s husband, Private Gordon Thomas Carmichael, was killed during an air raid on a theatre filled with children in England during WW2. Having just learned his date of death, July 9/43, I was astounded to find that such an event actually ocurred in East Grinstead on that day, and moreover that there were Canadian troops nearby. Does anyone reading this know anything about a Canadian serviceman killed in the Whitehall Cinema bombing? Thank you in advance, Ch.

By: East Grinstead » WWII Memories - Patricia’s Life in east Grinstead

East Grinstead » WWII Memories - Patricia’s Life in east Grinstead — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 09:57:44 +0000

[...] My childhood memories:- I was about 9 years old, when, in East Grinstead, a Bomb was dropped on the Cinema, and the film that was being shown was “Random Harvest”. A carnage ensued.I sat with Granny, watching the bodies being taken to the mortuary and the little church next to the cemetery. We used to run under the stairs to shelter from the Doodlebugs. When at School, and the Siren went, we had to go to the Shelters, where we sang songs like “Mares eat Oats”. One Bomb went into the chicken run and the chickens escaped into the old ladies’ home! I also remember the V.E.Day parties. [...]

By: East Grinstead » Memories of WWII - Patricia’s Life in east Grinstead

East Grinstead » Memories of WWII - Patricia’s Life in east Grinstead — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 09:54:52 +0000

By: East Grinstead » Memories of WWII - John Jacob Lyons

East Grinstead » Memories of WWII - John Jacob Lyons — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 23:56:58 +0000

[...] As several contributors have already mentioned, the Whitehall Cinema, and several other buildings in London Road, were hit by a cluster of bombs from a lone German raider on 9 July 1943. I witnessed the attack at close hand. I was exactly five and a half years old that day. I had been evacuated with my mother from the east-end of London two years earlier after our home had taken some bomb damage. My father had stayed in London to work and my elder brother had been evacuated with his school to Cambridgeshire. We had a room above a shop in London Road opposite Woolworth’s – part of the site now occupied by W H Smith. All afternoon I had been nagging my mother to buy me a toy cardboard clock that I had seen earlier in Woollies. It was now almost 5pm and the shop was about to close. Persuaded by her irascible and tearful child she went to buy the toy while I watched from the window. I stared at the entrance to Woolies until my mother emerged a few minutes later. Just as she did so the sound of a low-flying aircraft could be heard coming our way and I saw my mother look up at the plane while running back across London Road to our street-door next to the shop. The sound of the plane became a roar and by the time my mother had mounted the stairs to our room the plane must have been overhead. Just as the bombs started to explode she flew into our room and launched herself at her precious son, knocking him to the floor and covering him with her body. Terrified by the noise and my mother’s strange actions, I was shouting ” It’s nothing Mummy, it’s nothing”. It was several minutes before she allowed me to emerge from underneath her. In 1944 the shop where we had lived opposite Woolworth’s took a direct hit from a ‘flying bomb’. Another contributor has already mentioned that lightning did strike twice in the same place on that occasion. Why Hitler wanted to get rid of my mother and I so particularly isn’t clear. However he was thwarted. We had returned to London earlier that year, only to be evacuated again, this time to Leeds, when Hitler began his ‘last-ditch’ flying-bomb campaign. Well that’s my war story. By the way, I wonder if anyone else remembers when a ’spitfire’ was put on display on the wide pavement in East Grinstead High-Street sometime in 1942/3? I didn’t dream it, did I? [...]