Jerome Taylor: The Blitz tragedy that Churchill erased from history
[Jerome Taylor joined The Independent's Foreign Desk in 2005 and is now a Home News reporter with a particular penchant for religious affairs.]
Even after 65 years, remembering how Vera Trotter was killed on a winter’s evening in 1943 as the Luftwaffe made one of its regular post-Blitz raids on London’s East End is still enough to bring Alf Morris to tears. Standing on the eastern steps of Bethnal Green Tube station, the 78-year-old dabs his eyes with a handkerchief as he describes the moment his father found his eight-year-old friend. “My dad was the person who eventually identified Vera,” he recalls. “Only the week before he’d taken a nail out of her shoe. That was the only way that he was able to recognise her.”
But Vera wasn’t killed by German bombs. She died in the worst civilian accident of the Second World War – or, indeed, since – a barely-reported crush of people that was kept secret for years. As the air raid warning sounded on 3 March 1943, Vera and her mother Lillian routinely gathered their bundles of bedding and made their way to Bethnal Green Tube, a brand new extension of the Central line that had yet to serve as a station |but for the previous two years had become a much-needed air raid shelter with 5,000 beds.
For those living in the surrounding bomb-ravaged area, the triple bunk beds of Bethnal Green, nestled deep underground, were a safe haven.
But Vera and Lillian never made it that night. They and 171 others were killed as they descended the eastern staircase of the station. For once the terrifying one-tonne bombs dropped from the German Heinkels were not to blame for the horrendous death toll. The Bethnal Green Tube disaster, as it came to be known, was simply a tragic accident that remained buried in secrecy for decades. A small brass plaque above the entrance to Bethnal Green is the only indication for today’s commuters of what happened there. But now an ever dwindling group of survivors and their descendants are hoping to build a large memorial above the steps of the Tube station to inform future generations of the tragedy.
Planning permission has, after much wrangling, been approved but a lack of funds means that the £600,000 ‘Stairway to Heaven’ seems as far away from being built as eve. Survivors like Mr Morris are determined to have a proper memorial built before their generation |dies out. But they remain deeply concerned that few people are willing to support their cause because the disaster was an accident that took place in the poor East End.
“That disaster literally rocked the East End but no one wants to know about it,” said Mr Morris, shaking with anger. “I honestly believe that if it had happened in Knightsbridge or Kensington there would already be a memorial. I owe it to Vera and all the other people that died that day to create something that will preserve their memory forever. There should have been a memorial 50 years ago.” That Alf Morris is even here to campaign for a memorial is a miracle in itself. Twelve years old at the time, like Vera he found himself caught in the impenetrable crush on the eastern staircase as hundreds of terrified Londoners fled for the supposed safety of the shelter. He said: “To this day I don’t really know how I survived. People were screaming all around me, all trapped. I’d become wedged in a corner and although I couldn’t move my legs I was able to move my arms. It was Mrs Chumley, the air raid warden, who saved me. She just waded in and pulled me out.”
Concerned that the Nazis would use the disaster for propaganda, Churchill banned media coverage...
Read entire article at Independent (UK)
Even after 65 years, remembering how Vera Trotter was killed on a winter’s evening in 1943 as the Luftwaffe made one of its regular post-Blitz raids on London’s East End is still enough to bring Alf Morris to tears. Standing on the eastern steps of Bethnal Green Tube station, the 78-year-old dabs his eyes with a handkerchief as he describes the moment his father found his eight-year-old friend. “My dad was the person who eventually identified Vera,” he recalls. “Only the week before he’d taken a nail out of her shoe. That was the only way that he was able to recognise her.”
But Vera wasn’t killed by German bombs. She died in the worst civilian accident of the Second World War – or, indeed, since – a barely-reported crush of people that was kept secret for years. As the air raid warning sounded on 3 March 1943, Vera and her mother Lillian routinely gathered their bundles of bedding and made their way to Bethnal Green Tube, a brand new extension of the Central line that had yet to serve as a station |but for the previous two years had become a much-needed air raid shelter with 5,000 beds.
For those living in the surrounding bomb-ravaged area, the triple bunk beds of Bethnal Green, nestled deep underground, were a safe haven.
But Vera and Lillian never made it that night. They and 171 others were killed as they descended the eastern staircase of the station. For once the terrifying one-tonne bombs dropped from the German Heinkels were not to blame for the horrendous death toll. The Bethnal Green Tube disaster, as it came to be known, was simply a tragic accident that remained buried in secrecy for decades. A small brass plaque above the entrance to Bethnal Green is the only indication for today’s commuters of what happened there. But now an ever dwindling group of survivors and their descendants are hoping to build a large memorial above the steps of the Tube station to inform future generations of the tragedy.
Planning permission has, after much wrangling, been approved but a lack of funds means that the £600,000 ‘Stairway to Heaven’ seems as far away from being built as eve. Survivors like Mr Morris are determined to have a proper memorial built before their generation |dies out. But they remain deeply concerned that few people are willing to support their cause because the disaster was an accident that took place in the poor East End.
“That disaster literally rocked the East End but no one wants to know about it,” said Mr Morris, shaking with anger. “I honestly believe that if it had happened in Knightsbridge or Kensington there would already be a memorial. I owe it to Vera and all the other people that died that day to create something that will preserve their memory forever. There should have been a memorial 50 years ago.” That Alf Morris is even here to campaign for a memorial is a miracle in itself. Twelve years old at the time, like Vera he found himself caught in the impenetrable crush on the eastern staircase as hundreds of terrified Londoners fled for the supposed safety of the shelter. He said: “To this day I don’t really know how I survived. People were screaming all around me, all trapped. I’d become wedged in a corner and although I couldn’t move my legs I was able to move my arms. It was Mrs Chumley, the air raid warden, who saved me. She just waded in and pulled me out.”
Concerned that the Nazis would use the disaster for propaganda, Churchill banned media coverage...