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Whilst visiting the hospital for a broken arm sustained at my work at the iron forge in Ironville, I noticed a queue at a shop in Derby where the hospital was. So, like many other people during wartime, I joined the queue, not even knowing what it was I was queuing for!

Whilst in the queue, I heard two women behind me talking about an earlier attack on Rolls Royce. They said that workers had been waiting at the gates to be let in at the beginning of their shift, all was quiet and all of a sudden from nowhere, they saw a German pilot, grinning from his cockpit, before he let out rounds of fire upon the people waiting to start work.

Some workers were killed. The women called the German pilot a 'cheeky b*d and asked did you see them mrs?' and I confessed that I had not.

On another trip to the hospital I noticed that there were stretchers everywhere with people covered in blood on them, the Germans had bombed the viaduct, I think at Awsworth on the Notts/Derby border and there were many casualties.

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