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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by a Volunteer from Reading on behalf of Mr James Mason and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Mason fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Every street had an air raid shelter which had lamps on the corners to stop traffic accidents when everything was in blackout. I was a lamp boy and that meant it was my job to maintain these lamps.

When you turned into Chatham Street it looked like a straight road in the dark, but it wasn’t. A large army lorry knocked out the garages there during an air raid - that sort of thing wasn’t uncommon.

Wednesday was my day off and one day I went to the central cinema in Friar Street for the afternoon. But part way through it came up that the sirens had sounded and we had to leave the cinema. Then there was an almighty bang and the walls shuddered and the skylights in the ceiling all burst open. Everyone bustled out.

There was a jewellery shop where the Harris arcade is, it had all been blown open and all the jewellery was spilled out over the pavement, but I ran through it as I was worried about getting home. I went past the Queen Victoria statue and noticed that the bottom part of the mace had been blown off and was on the floor (this has not been fixed).

It turned out that the People’s Pantry had been bombed by a single German plan and about 40 people had been killed. It was a British restaurant, subsidised by the government, but there was a ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ antennae on the top of the building so everyone thought that the plane had focused on that.

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