Chiswick Gas Mains

Time early evening Aeptember 8th. 1944. a memory that will always stay with me. I was looking out of my mother's bedroom window looking across the Polytechnis Sports ground, when there was a rumble, my mother asked me if I had kicked anything, as she finished speaking there was a massive explosion, I was out of the bedroom and down all 15 stairs without touching one, and into the back garden heading for our Anderson air raid shelter, I looked across to my right and saw a collumn of debris going up. The first V2 had arrived in England. At first no one knew what had caused the explosion, and it was thought a gas-main had exploded, after that any unexplained explosion was referred to as a 'Chiswick Gas Main'

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