‘Germans bombed Royces’: history, stories and the senses

Perhaps my biggest regret about the missing 1940 diary is the absence of Norah’s report on the string of bombs that dropped on her home village of Castle Donington in August of that year: the small explosion in the vicarage paddock, the full incendiary ‘bread basket’ on the playing fields on Station Road and a blast on Bond Gate,  the impact of which, local resident Margaret Lindner recalled, felt as if ‘our house had been lifted up and plonked back down again.'(1) In terms of physical proximity, this was the closest the war came to Norah, although as we’ll soon see, its emotional impact is another story.

In their attacks on the English East Midlands, the Germans could have been looking for any number of industrial and transportation sites: Stanton Iron Works, Crossley Premier Gas Engines, Chilwell Depot and its subsidiary at Donington Park, and Toton railway sidings, the largest in England.

But it…