THE RAID ON TORQUAY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25241, 2 June 1943, Page 3

THE RAID ON TORQUAY

BOMBED SUNDAY SCHOOL SEARCH FOR VICTIMS LONDON, May 31. The Sunday school attendance registers were buried under the rubble of the ruined church in Torquay, making identification of the missing children difficult, but it is known that three teachers and 18 children were killed and 14 children seriously and 10 slightly injured. It was the town’s worst raid. The Director of Education for the town was among the many killed. He was walking on the seafront with children when the planes came over. He threw himself to the ground, protecting one child with his body. A cannon shell killed him, but the child was only slightly injured in a foot. * Members of the civil defence units, digging in the ruins of workmen’s cottages, found the body of of a man under whom his wife was still alive with both legs broken. She was conscious throughout the hour and a-half it took to extricate her, and was able to direct the workers to the spot nearby where her boy, aged 16, lay dead. Anxious parents were still waiting at the church gate this evening for news of their children while the rescue squads dug among the fallen masonry,