The Blitz tragedy that Churchill erased from history
At the time it was hushed up. But now survivors of Britain’s worst civilian tragedy, the Bethnal Green Tube shelter disaster, want a dignified memorial for its 173 victims ...
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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.
Read entire article at Independent (UK)
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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.