This post is in response to jerryteale's post of 28/9/13. in Kemp's Fire Topic. Welcome to the KHF!

From "A collection of Memories" by Cyril Ambrose Daniel, who was 3rd Ofiicer with the City of Rochester Fire Brigade during the War.
Now the real war in the air had begun. As I recall we had a very big raid on our local gasworks in Gas House Lane, just off the river. They had just filled up the coal retorts when the Stukas dive bombed. Two bombs made direct hits, one on Retort House and the other on the gas control valves. Not long after therefore, a large blaze developed. The raid was just after midnight. I attended with 3 pumps and got to work with four hydrants and one pump from the river, in total supplying 8 main jets.
We desperately tried to get the flames under control so that the bombers would not be able to use them as homing beacons for Rochester, (Shorts Aircraft Factory was just up-river) to try and help prevent them from delivering more nastiness.
When daylight came, we could see the extent of the damage. One of the firemen said "Come with me Guv, I think there's a man`s hand in the coke heap, and sure enough there it was, and with a little digging the rest of the body was found. Much to my surprise the body was still alive but unconscious. We managed to revive him and he was not apparently injured. All he wanted was his glasses and a large glass of beer! We did find his glasses but no beer. He was sent off to hospital for a check up and was found to be suffering from shock, as we found out later.
It appears he was on watch (fire watch) near the valve pit when the second bomb hit the gas valves and blew him into the 30 foot highcoke heap. The coke rolled down on top of him, but he had passed out and could not help himself. The bomb fractured all of the outgoing valves, cutting off the supply to the town. The job took three days to deal with, but it took some three months to get the gas supplies back on line.
Hope this will be of interest.