Post by Macmoish on Nov 10, 2010 7:34:30 GMT
[Bumping a year]
Over to....
The Guardian/Frank Keating
Memories of the Blitz bombers and a damaging time for sport
Serious bomb damage was suffered by League grounds all across England – and some of them were put to different uses at various stages of the conflict
Sunday night marks the 70th anniversary of the German bombing raid which obliterated Coventry. Between 7pm and 5am the next morning, Luftwaffe aircraft laid to waste 80% of the city, including the medieval cathedral; 568 civilians were killed and 863 seriously injured.
The future England cricketer Tom Cartwright was five years old and (according to his standout 2007 biography by Stephen Chalke) all he could recall in adulthood of that incandescent night was his van-driver father calming the family's terrors as they cowered from the hours of fulminating blasts all around them with the reassuring: "Don't worry, you never hear the one that hits you." On emerging from their makeshift shelter Tom's mother exclaimed: "Look, dawn's breaking" – at which Dad corrects her: "That's not the dawn, it's the whole of Coventry on fire."
Coventry's demolition had come nine weeks after Germany's cataclysmic opening salvo on London on the night of 7 September when 350 bombers swept up the Thames in successive deadly waves to drop 335 tonnes of explosives which, in 10 hours, killed 436 people and seriously injured 1,600. It was the start of the 246-day Blitz, which would target all parts of the British Isles until the middle of May 1941 at the cost of more than 43,000 civilian lives.
Earlier this year, the Times printed a graphic entry from the 1940 diary of a young Londoner which had been discovered by his daughter, Vivien Sellers, at the back of a sock-drawer more than three-score years after it had been written: "Saturday 7 September – This afternoon went to see Arsenal v Fulham on Spurs' ground. It's a lovely ground too. Arsenal played a magnificent first half and all five of their goals were snorters. At 4.55pm, 15 minutes from time, the air raid came and the game was called off. Five minutes later I watched a formation of Junker bombers, protected by fighters, attacked by two of our planes. There were at least 50 planes and two came crashing down before they went out of sight. Boy, what a thrill it was."
That 5-0 victory of Arsenal's was the second game of a new season in which all senior competition was redrafted on strictly regional lines. Arsenal and Tottenham had been sharing Spurs' White Hart Lane since the previous winter when Highbury was requisitioned as a first-aid training centre and (in readiness for bombing strikes) HQ for all north London's ARP (air raid precautions). After 7 September, White Hart Lane's East Stand was closed, commandeered as a mortuary for bomb victims. Other English League grounds were put to different uses at various stages of the conflict: Preston's Deepdale and Swindon's County Ground were prisoner-of-war camps, for instance, while Exeter City's St James Park became a training centre for US troops.
Serious bomb damage was suffered by League grounds all across England – from Plymouth's Home Park to Sunderland's Roker, from Southampton's Dell to Sheffield's Bramall Lane. Birmingham's St Andrew's took more than one battering. Both Nottingham clubs took direct hits, for example; so did Ipswich and Norwich's respective Portman and Carrow Roads, and Everton's Goodison Park. London's dockside grounds such as West Ham's Upton Park and Millwall's Den obviously took a regular series of bombardments.
I was only three in February 1941 but my elder sister reminds how Dad woke us in north Gloucestershire and took us up to the attic "to watch Bristol burn" 25 miles away. That was the raid which obliterated Bristol City's main stand at Ashton Gate. By the summer of 1949 I was 11 – and walking, tingling with expectation, to my first cricket Test match: England v New Zealand in Manchester on 23 July. On the way, friends pointed out United's Old Trafford football ground, which had been badly bombed on the night of 11 March 1941 – and now at last United were about to finish all of eight years sharing with City's Maine Road; rebirth and fresh baptism was just a month away (24 August: 3-0 v Bolton Wanderers).
Mind you, those 1940 raids were nothing new. This month marks the 94th anniversary of Hartlepool United's two wooden grandstands on their Victoria ground being burnt to ashes on 27 November 1916 when a first world war Zeppelin airship pilot mis-aimed as he came in over the docks to toss out a handful of primitive firebombs. For the following quarter of a century the Hartlepool board conducted a lengthy correspondence with the German government, demanding £2,500 in compensation. They gave up bothering once new German bombers had returned to Teeside on 8 December 1940 to drop a more explosive cluster on the rebuilt and homely riverside stadium.
www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2010/nov/10/blitz-football-grounds-bomb-damage
Over to....
The Guardian/Frank Keating
Memories of the Blitz bombers and a damaging time for sport
Serious bomb damage was suffered by League grounds all across England – and some of them were put to different uses at various stages of the conflict
Sunday night marks the 70th anniversary of the German bombing raid which obliterated Coventry. Between 7pm and 5am the next morning, Luftwaffe aircraft laid to waste 80% of the city, including the medieval cathedral; 568 civilians were killed and 863 seriously injured.
The future England cricketer Tom Cartwright was five years old and (according to his standout 2007 biography by Stephen Chalke) all he could recall in adulthood of that incandescent night was his van-driver father calming the family's terrors as they cowered from the hours of fulminating blasts all around them with the reassuring: "Don't worry, you never hear the one that hits you." On emerging from their makeshift shelter Tom's mother exclaimed: "Look, dawn's breaking" – at which Dad corrects her: "That's not the dawn, it's the whole of Coventry on fire."
Coventry's demolition had come nine weeks after Germany's cataclysmic opening salvo on London on the night of 7 September when 350 bombers swept up the Thames in successive deadly waves to drop 335 tonnes of explosives which, in 10 hours, killed 436 people and seriously injured 1,600. It was the start of the 246-day Blitz, which would target all parts of the British Isles until the middle of May 1941 at the cost of more than 43,000 civilian lives.
Earlier this year, the Times printed a graphic entry from the 1940 diary of a young Londoner which had been discovered by his daughter, Vivien Sellers, at the back of a sock-drawer more than three-score years after it had been written: "Saturday 7 September – This afternoon went to see Arsenal v Fulham on Spurs' ground. It's a lovely ground too. Arsenal played a magnificent first half and all five of their goals were snorters. At 4.55pm, 15 minutes from time, the air raid came and the game was called off. Five minutes later I watched a formation of Junker bombers, protected by fighters, attacked by two of our planes. There were at least 50 planes and two came crashing down before they went out of sight. Boy, what a thrill it was."
That 5-0 victory of Arsenal's was the second game of a new season in which all senior competition was redrafted on strictly regional lines. Arsenal and Tottenham had been sharing Spurs' White Hart Lane since the previous winter when Highbury was requisitioned as a first-aid training centre and (in readiness for bombing strikes) HQ for all north London's ARP (air raid precautions). After 7 September, White Hart Lane's East Stand was closed, commandeered as a mortuary for bomb victims. Other English League grounds were put to different uses at various stages of the conflict: Preston's Deepdale and Swindon's County Ground were prisoner-of-war camps, for instance, while Exeter City's St James Park became a training centre for US troops.
Serious bomb damage was suffered by League grounds all across England – from Plymouth's Home Park to Sunderland's Roker, from Southampton's Dell to Sheffield's Bramall Lane. Birmingham's St Andrew's took more than one battering. Both Nottingham clubs took direct hits, for example; so did Ipswich and Norwich's respective Portman and Carrow Roads, and Everton's Goodison Park. London's dockside grounds such as West Ham's Upton Park and Millwall's Den obviously took a regular series of bombardments.
I was only three in February 1941 but my elder sister reminds how Dad woke us in north Gloucestershire and took us up to the attic "to watch Bristol burn" 25 miles away. That was the raid which obliterated Bristol City's main stand at Ashton Gate. By the summer of 1949 I was 11 – and walking, tingling with expectation, to my first cricket Test match: England v New Zealand in Manchester on 23 July. On the way, friends pointed out United's Old Trafford football ground, which had been badly bombed on the night of 11 March 1941 – and now at last United were about to finish all of eight years sharing with City's Maine Road; rebirth and fresh baptism was just a month away (24 August: 3-0 v Bolton Wanderers).
Mind you, those 1940 raids were nothing new. This month marks the 94th anniversary of Hartlepool United's two wooden grandstands on their Victoria ground being burnt to ashes on 27 November 1916 when a first world war Zeppelin airship pilot mis-aimed as he came in over the docks to toss out a handful of primitive firebombs. For the following quarter of a century the Hartlepool board conducted a lengthy correspondence with the German government, demanding £2,500 in compensation. They gave up bothering once new German bombers had returned to Teeside on 8 December 1940 to drop a more explosive cluster on the rebuilt and homely riverside stadium.
www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2010/nov/10/blitz-football-grounds-bomb-damage
Did much better with refereeing, no more stoppages to get match over.