Residents Recall a Bomb Blast Tragedy
Bernard Summers was lucky to escape with his life when a bomb buried in a South Croydon school's grounds exploded throwing him across the room. Six bomb disposal engineers, known as Sappers, were killed while trying to dig out the bomb.
The device had dropped on the site of Purley Oaks School, Bynes Road, on 5th February 1941,
No one was injured when the bomb landed and, after the school was evacuated, the explosive was left for six days until the Sappers were called in to remove it.
It was while they were undertaking the delicate task of digging out the bomb it exploded.
Mr Summers, now 74, was sitting with his back to the window when the bomb went off, hurling him to the other side of the front room.
But amazingly Mr Summers, who lived at 87 Bynes Road, recounts how just days earlier he and his school friends had been playing on the bomb,
"I was 11 at the time, I was sitting at home sitting in a chair with my back to the window when the bomb exploded and I was thrown across the room," he says.
"We'd all been playing on it on the bank a few days earlier ?
Local history enthusiast Brian Roote who has been researching the incident told the Croydon Guardian he thought it was strange the incident did not attract more media attention at the time.
Mr Summers agrees with the historian's suggestion that the reason for the lack of reports was probably to try and keep up war-torn Croydon's spirits.
"We had to keep the morale up at those times,"
Joan Crabb was around 13 when the bomb exploded. The 77 year old, who still lives in the same house in Bynes Road, had returned home just after the blast.
She recalls: "I was with my aunt at the time and we weren't allowed to go back to the house at first.
"But when they let us in it was a terrible state. It was devastation. We were looking after some budgies and they were thrown off the wall."
Mrs Crabb, whose grandfather bought the Bynes Road property when it was first built, says she did not know why the event was not widely reported.
"You really had to get on with things in those days," she says. "You couldn't let it get you down. It could be very tough but everybody looked out for each other."