Bethnal Green Tube Shelter Disaster

On the evening of March 3rd 1943 I came very close to being a victim of the Bethnal Green Tube Shelter disaster.
I lived about a mile and a half from Bethnal Green station, which, like many stations on the London Underground, was being used at that time by people taking shelter during bombing raids. I had been to visit my friend Sid in the hospital in Cambridge Heath Road, and as I set off on my journey home I heard the air-raid siren so I decided to take refuge in the station which was about 200 yards from the hospital. As I neared the station there was deafening noise which, like many other people, I thought was bombs dropping, but in fact it was anti-aircraft gunfire from a new type of rocket gun which had just been brought into use in Victoria Park.
I crossed the road to the station and was about to go in, but a man standing at the top of the station stairs, who may have been a warden, indicated that it was unsafe to go down as something had happened inside.I did not hesitate, but took off at top speed to run home through Victoria Park and eventually reached the relative safety of the surface shelter outside our home.
News of the station disaster was virtually suppressed for two years for reasons of morale, as there were 173 fatalities. I have been to the National Archives at Kew and read the transcript of the enquiry, and it is thought that a woman carrying a baby fell on the stairs and people behind piled on top of her, causing them to suffocate. It was the largest civilian accident of the war, and was responsible for a third of the area's wartime deaths. The incident is recorded on a plaque at the entrance to the station.
Three months afterwards I joined the Royal Navy, but ironically the closest I came to death throughout the war was that evening at Bethnal Green.
When I was in the Navy I was at shore establishments HMS Glendower, Pembroke and Canopus (Alexandria) and on HMS Vengeance, Sandhurst, Triumph,and ML564. I would be very interested to hear from anyone who remembers me, or who was at Bethnal Green that evening.

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