ALTHOUGH the sky was covered by cloud it was impossible for Roderick Gill to miss the moment a German bomber launched an assault on East Grinstead.
Mr Gill, who was four years old on the day of the bombing, was overlooking the town from the old train station at Swan Mead, off London Road, the fatal moment the town fell victim to the deadly air raid.
Watching from half a mile away, Mr Gill, who lived in Hartfield, watched London Road and the High Street go up in smoke as fires took hold of buildings.
Now 74 and living in Lingfield Road, Mr Gill recalled a day that is lodged in his memory.
"I had come into the town to go shopping with my mother, though I can't remember what for, but my grandparents were also in town," he said.
"I remember very clearly that the sky was grey, completely covered with clouds, and I was at the train station which was higher up than the existing one.
"I was looking over the town when the air raid sirens started and then the plane started going round and round in the sky. "
It was then that the bomber started to unload its arsenal over the town, striking the Whitehall Cinema and surrounding shops and then the High Street.
"He popped out of the sky from the west and dropped eight, nine, maybe ten bombs. I remember the loud explosions and it happening very quickly," Mr Gill recalled.
"There was thick smoke and fires everywhere. My grandmother had been near the cinema at the time of the bombing waiting for her husband and was blown across to the other side of the road near Boots. She was lucky to walk away uninjured.
It was years before Mr Gill realised the full horror of what had unfolded before him that July day, when he read details in the East Grinstead Courier. Exact details of the bombing was kept out of the newspapers at the time because reporting restrictions.
"It was years before I found out just how many people had died that day and it really shocked me," he said.
One of the few people to come out of the Whitehall cinema alive that day was film projectionist Roy Henn, who cheated death three times as he crawled to survival.
Mr Henn, who lived at Halsford Park Road in East Grinstead, miraculously dodged death when a half-ton bomb tore through the cinema's roof on July 9.
He evaded the first bomb before pulling himself down a spiral staircase as the building collapsed.
He also somehow avoided a hail of bullets raining down from the German Dornier 217 plane.
Last week, dozens of residents paid respect to those killed and injured in the Whitehall Cinema bombing at a moving service to mark the 70th anniversary of the attack.
Gathered outside the old cinema building, in London Road, young and old paused for a one minute's silence to remember the moment when the bombs fell. Reverend Canon Clive Everett-Allen, of St Swithun's Church, led prayers remembering the names of those whose lives were taken away or changed forever in the wake of the bombing before a wreath was laid at the war memorial at East Court.
