A wartime near-miss

4:07pm Monday 31st March 2008

Chesham Place is one of the finest roads in Brighton's Kemp Town and there is only one indication of a tragedy that took place during the Second World War.

When a bomb dropped there on September 14, 1940, it killed an ARP warden and caused tremendous damage to the houses.

The homes were rebuilt, apart from the railings outside No 10, which to this day have never been replaced.

Les Roberts, now 87, remembers that day clearly, for as a young man he was living with his relatives at 11 Chesham Place.

He said: "I'm very lucky to be able to tell you the story because that day my family and I had a very near miss, courtesy of Mr Hitler and the German Luftwaffe."

Les, a local lad born in nowdemolished Warwick Street, worked at a garage in Upper St James's Street when war broke out.

His sister Eileen had married a solicitor, John Linsley-Thomas, who owned the lease on 11 Chesham Place. Les lived in the basement flat while John and Eileen were on the top floor.

Although the Battle of Britain had been won by the middle of September 1940, the Germans were still dropping bombs on resorts such as Brighton.

Les was at home on that fateful Saturday because work in the garage was scarce, due to petrol rationing.

He was in the basement fitting a new flex to a lamp, watched by his girlfriend, Margaret. His mother was choosing a book to read during a rest in bed and Margaret was walking towards him when there was a deafening explosion.

Les said: "The whole building shook, with glasses, cups, plates and ornaments crashing down around us.

The large window at the rear of the lounge came crashing down on the sofa where my mother and girlfriend had just been sitting, and choking dust quickly filled the room.

"After the initial shock, which stunned all three of us, I quickly checked both my mother and Margaret were luckily unhurt.

"My next thoughts were of my brother-in-law in the top-floor flat.

John was ill in bed with a terrible cold. At the back of our flat were stone steps leading up to the ground floor landing.

"I leapt those steps two at a time and was quickly on the hall landing where I could see the splintered, broken front door lying in the hallway.

It had been blown off its hinges.

There was a thick cloud of dust everywhere as I started to climb the stairs towards the top-floor flat, not knowing what I would find. Halfway up I met John, who was staggering down covered in white dust."

John had been asleep and had been thrown across his room by the blast but luckily was not injured.

Les went with him downstairs and said: "As we got down to the ground floor, I stepped over the broken front door and out onto the street. Dust was thick in the air, I could feel it in my lungs and I could smell burnt cordite.

"Next to the front north corner of our flat, just seven feet away from my mother's bedroom window, a bomb had exploded on the hard granite kerb stone. Just a few feet away, I could see someone lying face down on the pavement. I could tell from the tin hat, which had been pushed back and was now covering the back of his head, he was an ARP warden. He was motionless and I could see a pool of blood around him.

"I was only 20 years old and felt scared. I suspected he was dead, although I had never seen a dead body before."

Les stayed with the man until a nearby doctor pronounced the warden dead and went on to treat a man who had been trapped in a car caught by the blast.

He found out three bombs had exploded in Chesham Place. One landed on the roof of a house across the road and a second on the kerbstone.

The third crashed through the cast-iron railings and exploded in the basement of No 10, the house next door to his basement flat.

Twenty bombs fell in Kemp Town that day and Les later heard more than 50 people had been killed while watching a film at the nearby Odeon cinema.

As for Les and his family, they had an incredibly lucky escape, not even being scratched, although debris and glass covered the floor of their flat.

Most badly damaged was the front, which had taken much of the blast with all the windows blown out. In the large front bedroom the whole of the lath-and-plaster ceiling collapsed on to his mother's bed.

Les said: "Had she not spent that few extra moments choosing a book she would have been badly injured while in bed.

"My girlfriend also had a near miss; by moving from the sofa to my side, she had missed being injured by the glass from the rear window, which was now lying shattered on our sofa."

Les and his family had to move in with his brother in Hollingdean Terrace. The next day he looked at all the bomb damage and only a few days later, quit his job to join the RAF.

He said: "Chesham Place is still there today and, looking at the beautiful Regency buildings, it's almost impossible to imagine the devastation of that day "But on closer examination, it can be seen the cast-iron railings are missing from the front of No 10, the scar of that day still there all these years later."

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