Hull Blitz: Inches separated life and death for brothers Jim and Raymond

THE two teenage brothers were standing beside each other when the bomb ploughed through the roof of Hull's Francis Askew School.

On the ground floor 26 men and women were on duty at the first aid station that had been a hive of quiet activity as the air raid had started to roll over the city half an hour earlier on the night of July 11, 1941.

In an instant, the south-west wing of the school was destroyed by high explosive.

Raymond Peat, 16, disappeared through the collapsing floor and was immediately covered by bricks and debris from the surrounding walls and ceiling. His brother Jim, 18, who seconds earlier had been talking to him, vanished under the rubble.

"I was completely buried," Raymond would later recall. "My helmet must have caused a gap, which enabled me to breathe as my nose and mouth blocked with dirt and made it impossible for me to shout.

"My arms and legs were trapped and I was unable to move at all. I was absolutely useless and knew only God could help me.

"There was no sound from my brother and the others who'd been in the room with me but I could hear someone screaming."

Eventually, several hours later, Raymond was pulled alive from the rubble. His rescuer, a Mr Ford, had burrowed a tunnel through the wrecked school wing. Gently, he cleared soil and debris from Raymond's nose, mouth and eyes before a team were able to pull him clear. Raymond's ankle had been trapped and shattered in the explosion.

"Because I was in so much pain, I was quite willing to have the thing cut off if necessary," Raymond said. It would be three months before he would walk again.

Another six trapped survivors were found under the school that Friday night. Jim was among seven whose bodies were finally recovered late on Friday, long after the sirens had sounded across Hull to announce the end of that night's raids. The dead were all men; three medics, two ambulance drivers, the depot leader Norman Dick, and Jim.

In the end, a matter of inches had separated the life and death of Raymond and Jim, the two boys from Seaton Grove who had grown up together, gone to school together and volunteered together.

One would go on to have a fulfilling and productive life. The other unfulfilled, cut short from the hopes and dreams of a teenager.

The brothers had been keen to be part of the war. Jim dreamed of joining the dashing ranks of the Royal Air Force as a fighter pilot.

But too young to join up, the pair had volunteered for service in their home city, becoming cyclist messengers.

Their front line was the cratered, smoking streets of Hull under the Luftwaffe Blitz, delivering crucial messages between the emergency services as the bombs dropped. It was gallant, dangerous work by the two teenagers.

The raid of July 11 had been much the same as many since the bombing attacks on Hull had started in earnest in February. Only a few months before, two consecutive nights of bombing on May 8 and 9 had killed 220 people.

Throughout the raids and false alarms, Raymond and Jim diligently reported for duty and set off on their bikes into the dangerous night under skies laden with fear and uncertainty.

That night the Luftwaffe Heinkels and Junkers had arrived over the city at 12.52am, tracking up the unmistakable Humber before targeting west Hull in waves.

Incendiary bombs cascaded down on an area stretching from Great Thornton Street westwards to Pickering Road, and from Argyle Street southwards to Hessle Road. The bomb aimers were not after the docks or industry but the people of Hull.

Across the city, hundreds of volunteers manned the first aid, police and fire stations. They, and the people of Hull, would be the first line of defence as the bombs fell.

In the first half-hour of the raid, fires were reported at homes and businesses in Spring Bank West, Somerset Street, Edinburgh Street and Anlaby Road.

In Somerset Street the staff of a corn merchant managed to stop flames spreading to their grain store; in Spring Bank West a police patrol extinguished a fire at a garage. At 220 Division Road, an incendiary smashed the roof of a house but was manhandled outside by the householder before major damage was caused.

Incendiaries also hit Sir Henry Cooper School in Bean Street but firefighters managed to control the blaze with only slight damage caused.

But the bomb that hit Francis Askew School was not packed with incendiary gel but high explosive (HE).

The official police report from the night said: "At 1.20am a very heavy HE bomb fell on the S.W. wing of the Francis Askew School, North Road, the bottom floor being occupied by a First Aid Depot. 26 members of staff were in the wing of the building which was demolished and 14 of them were trapped.

"Rescue work was commenced at once and seven of them were got out alive but injured, the remaining seven being released by rescue workers, late the same day, all being dead. One ambulance vehicle being buried by debris and destroyed and about 20 houses in North Road were slightly damaged."

A few days later, the controller of Hull's Air Raid Precaution Service, councillor Leonard Speight, wrote to Raymond and Jim's parents, Tom and Clara, to express his condolences.

"It is indeed a serious blow that two of your sons should be involved," he said. "As members of the Cyclist Messenger Corps they were known as being two of the most willing and conscientious volunteers that we had, and although one of them has been called to carry his last message, it is earnestly hoped that his brother will quickly be restored to normal health."

With Raymond evacuated to hospital in Driffield, where he would spend weeks being rehabilitated from his serious injuries, mother Clara had one more wish to honour Jim. As he had been so desperately keen to join the RAF, Clara had asked the authorities if her son's ashes could be scattered by the RAF.

At 6.05pm on August 14, Squadron Leader Dennis Armitage flew his Spitfire low over Leconfield airfield north of Hull and released Jim's ashes into sky.

"I have to inform you," wrote the station commander to Clara the following day, "That your wishes regarding the disposal of your son's ashes have been carried out. They were scattered over the landing ground from a Fighter aircraft."

Jim's death devastated his mother and brother. Clara, a dedicated Christian, turned to her belief for comfort.

Raymond, traumatised by being buried for so long close to his dead brother, would leave the house whenever there was a thunderstorm.

Later in the war he would work at a German prisoner of war camp but never bore any malice towards the captives, many of them Luftwaffe crews shot down over the UK.

Jim had been one of 21 killed that night in Hull. Another 46 had been injured. There would be a brief respite before the bombers returned on the night of the July 15. Two more heavy raids would arrive on July 18 and 19. In those seven days 186 people would be killed and 182 seriously injured.

Then the Germans would finally turn away from Hull and the killing began to slow down. When the war ended in 1945, 1,242 people had been killed in the 82 bombing raids launched against the city.

In 1953, a memorial to those who died in the raids was dedicated at Northern Cemetery in Chanterlands Avenue.

Last Wednesday, 61 years later, a dwindling band of survivors of the Hull Blitz and relatives of those who died gathered at the same memorial, umbrellas warding off the rain, to pay their respects.

For lengthy periods they were silent, caught in their memories of the nights when fire and explosions tore through the streets, businesses and factories of Hull.

Among them was Raymond's son David Peat. "How can we not spend a moment each year to remember the sacrifice and suffering endured by Hull's citizens?" he said. "All I wish is to carry on what my father tried to do, which was to not to let the people who made the ultimate sacrifice be forgotten."