Hello there, I know this is an old post, but I'm writing the Euology for my Godfather - Colin Herbert, who was a six month old baby when he was involved in this bombing in Ordnance Street in December 1940. He was trapped under the rubble for six hours, in his mother's arms (she was Florence Herbert). Florrie had been half way down the stairs to the cellar when the bomb hit, she'd sent her older son, four year old Alan, down to the cellar before her when the bomb hit. Her husband Harry was at the top of the stairs. Their rescue was hampered by a raging fire, and in the process of putting this out, the little boy, Alan, drowned. My Auntie Florrie had serious hip injuries and was hospitalised for many months, her husband had an ankle injury. Baby Colin was unharmed. Writing this Euology, I wonder about the impact of this trauma. Colin Herbert lived a full life - he worked for the MOD, loved tennis, bowls, cards, he sang in the church choir and played the piano beautifully, he was an active member of the RSPB, but he never left his grandparents' house on Wyles Road in Chatham, where his parents had moved after their newsagents on Ordnance Street was destroyed in the bombing. Colin lost his father at 17, and lived with his mother for the next forty years, until she died in 1997, and then alone, for almost another twenty years until he had to move to a nursing home just over two years ago. He never married or had a life partner, and he didn't have any children. I wonder, but will never know, that if his mother hadn't lost her four year old son in such devastating circumstances, if Colin's life might have been different. His passing feels like the last vestige of war in my family, as we clear his grandmother's house in Wyles Road. After he died, my sister and mother were in this house looking for documents, and opened his mother's wardrobe (untouched since her death), at the back, behind a low shelf, they found a pair of little boys' shoes, that must have belonged to Alan Herbert. Colin Herbert's funeral is on Mon 17th Sept at 9.45am in Medway Crematorium, and afterwards at the Chatham Suburban Club in Wyles Road. Anyone who knew him, or who has a connection to this bombing, is welcome to attend. Jools Gilson, writing from Cork, Ireland.