Newport Stories:
Eveswell Bombing

Dennis Cockbill was still a schoolboy at the outbreak of the war. After taking his School Certificate examinations had to wait until he was eighteen to join the RAF. Here he remembers bombing raids including one on Eveswell Street, just across the railway line from ROF Newport.
This is his story.

"When I was 15 or 16, still in school, I joined the 210 1st Monmouthshire Air Training Corps, the first squadron to be formed. Lessons were in a building in Cambrian Road and our instructor had been a Radio Officer in the Merchant Navy. From this training it was natural that I volunteered for the RAF as a Wireless Operator Aircrew. While in the ATC I was promoted to Sergeant and remember taking drill at Rodney Parade.

Leaving school and knowing the RAF was in line, I worked for my father in the offices at Lysaghts until joining the RAF at eighteen.

One day I was taking ledgers from the works office to the head office. There was a low cloud base and suddenly out of the cloud came an aircraft. I saw three black objects beneath the plane. They were bombs - it was a Heinkel! The bombs fell on railway tracks, missing the works. The warning sirens went and we spent some time in the shelters after the event!

One night I was fire watching with my father who was an officer in the Home Guard. It was a clear night and we heard an aircraft go over, then an almighty bang. A mine had dropped on Eveswell Street. No warnings had been given, people still in their homes, many were killed. Little did I believe that three years later I would be doing the same thing to the Germans.

I also remember as a lad collecting leaflets at the Goldcliff levels, dropped by the Germans."

- Dennis Cockbill, January 2005

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