On July 24-25, 1943, Allied bombers levelled the German town of Hamburg. This is Ernst-Otto Bech’s first-hand account of the destruction wrought.
The Saturday of July 24, 1943, was a glorious, mid-summer day (27°C) in Hamburg.
Father was home on leave. For the Sunday our parents had planned an excursion to the Elbe for Doris, Anke and me. The picnic basket was packed. Mother made potato salad.
From the start of the war till July, 1943, Hamburg had seen 137 air-raids, with 1431 deaths and 4675 wounded. More than 40,000 buildings were hit, 1310 completely destroyed.
This was the new normality, being pulled out of sleep, sitting together in the bomb shelter, ears cocked, sharing worries, exhausted children asleep, everyone waiting anxiously, hoping for the all-clear. Were we frightened? Not really. It had so often turned out OK, so why not this time, too? Took it for granted? Not that, either, we just put up with it. It was war.
There was something else, though. Strangers got talking, hit it off, perhaps. Groups formed, forged together by common danger and distress. Mainly just sitting silently, tension in the air, the thump of the flak, explosions, the planes droning overhead, people’s cries in the distance.
Then the all-clear, a long drawn blast of the siren. Hamburg’s inhabitants shuffled off to their beds, as on July 23, and the house went quiet, a welcome contrast to that initial hectic clatter of feet on the wooden stairs.
"Operation Gomorrah" began on July 24 at 9.45pm, when the first bomber set off from Oakington airport. By 11pm 791 machines had set off for the North Sea, laden with 2253 explosive bombs, about 25,000 large fire-bombs and 33,000 smaller ones.
At 12.33am the sirens howled. "A false alarm", father opined, and the family went back to sleep. Half an hour later, though, we were startled by blinding, flaring light, huge explosions, one after the other. This was the real thing. So far Hamburg had got off fairly lightly, with no-one daring to say: "For how long?" Now it was deadly reality.
We tore down the steps from our third storey flat to the cellar — not a proper bomb shelter, just a cobbler’s work-room. The elderly couple let us in. All around us a total inferno. The fires caused by the explosions lit up the city as if it were day. Impossible to make oneself heard. The bombs created a wall of sound that drowned out everything else.
We had to leave the precarious shelter of the cobbler, and make our way through the streets to the bunker allocated to us. But how? It would have meant a 500m dash through the inferno. Father decided on a shelter "round the corner" in Bismarck St, only 100m. away. We set off at a run, father holding Anke, Doris clinging to Mother’s hand, 8-year-old I could make my own way. As we ran I was dumbfounded by the awesome spectacle of this annihilation of the city.
The steel door of the shelter was bolted shut; it opened only a chink, for a voice to shout "full up!" and closed again. Father yelled something, I don’t know what, but the door opened up and we were pulled in. I can still recall everyone’s anger at us. Horrible!
No doubt about it, the cellar was packed to the brim, but so what if it’s a matter of life or death? We lost all sense of time. Once again someone hammered at the door. No new fugitives this time, but the air-raid warden, whose voice broke as he shouted: "Out, everyone, the house is on fire, is about to collapse."
Sitting closest to the door, we were the first to get out, father leading the way. I don’t know if he had thought it out or just unconsciously set off for the enormous bunker: via Bismarck St, Eichen St, Eppendorfer Way, a shortcut through a drainage channel covered by wooden beams, Alardus St. This bunker was the only place which was really secure. Either we got there ...
The hell around us got worse. Houses no longer burnt on their own, whole streets were on fire. Running was not easy as the ground was covered with slippery pieces of broken glass. Flames were pouring out of the windows of the houses everywhere, the air was hot and sticky. I was surprised that as we ran for dear life I was so aware of something unique and irreparable happening. I wasn’t afraid. Father was there leading us, and I had blind faith in him.
As we ran over the wooden beams, which were burning, father trod on some phosphorus, which set his shoes alight, but we still managed to reach the bunker. We had made it. All the sounds were muffled inside, it felt almost normal, compared with what was raging outside. No restfulness, though, no relaxation, a weird buzzing as if we were in a beehive.
Those in charge of the bunker informed us with a loudspeaker which houses in the neighbourhood were on fire, and despite the bombs and the fires some ventured out to save what they could. Around the bunker a pile of the goods they had managed to rescue began to grow, and it got higher and higher, posing a danger to life and limb. One fire-bomb could have turned the bunker into an oven, frying us alive. Somehow or other this danger was averted. Between 3.19am and 5.15am Bomber Command landed back in England.
In Hamburg, 10,289 people had died. Two more huge raids followed on July 27-28, and on August 2-3. More than 40,000 deaths in all. That was it. There was no longer anything worth targeting.
• Ernst-Otto Bech was 8 when the attack on Hamburg took place: he grew up to be a sea captain. His account is translated by his Dunedin relative by marriage Peter Matheson.
