I remember the Sandhurst Road School bombing. I was at Ballamore Road School, upstairs in the hall having dinner. We heard the aircraft coming - there were four of them - and the teacher on duty told us all to get under the tables - quickly! There had been no siren warning, the raid was a complete surprise - even the barrage ballooons were down - they were supposed to stop that sort of raid. The teacher was right to assume that the aeroplanes were unfriendly! Everyone in the area was very angry about the event, but on later reflection I am sure that the Luftwaffe fighter bombers intended to hit Hither Green railway sidings. They were travelling at around 400 mph so a few seconds error in sighting could have caused the tragic bombing of the school. I remember that they also strafed Sydenham Gas Works and set a gas holder on fire. I believe that my first teacher in the Ballamore Infants School in 1935, a Miss Jukes, was killed at Sandhurst Road with other teachers and many children. At the time of the bombing I lived at 17 Merlin Gardens, having been born in Ballamore Road in 1931 and moved to Merlin Gardens in 1935. My elder brother Stanley, was killed at Forest Hill in 1940 in an air raid, just at the end of the Battle of Britain, on my father's birthday, and is buried in Hither Green Cemetery next to the Sandhurst Road School victims. Incidentally, I told some of the children in Merlin School (was Ballamore Road) about the bombing of Sandhurst Road School when I visited Downham, and the school of course, last year. I now live many miles from Downham having left there in 1949 to join the RAF where I served for 34 years, but I do look back to my childhood there with great nostalgia. Most of my mates of those times have passed on, but I am still in touch with one who used to live in Durham Hill.
