In a moment, the darkness of night erupted into fiery damnation. The silent air, filled only by the melody of crickets and an occasional hooting of an owl, had been torn asunder by a deafening explosion. It was followed by another. The latter was louder and fiercer, with a rage that engulfed the serenity of Swanvale. Flames ferociously danced, leaping towards the twinkling stars and waving farewell to the German bombers as they flew away, leaving their destruction behind.

 

It was just after midnight on Tuesday 30th May 1944 when the Luftwaffe bomb struck the 1,250,000-gallon tank. It was full of petrol and the tank fractured. Fuel flowed into the nearby stream. The incendiary bomb had set the fuel alight, causing a massive fire to spread and rage for twenty-two hours. It was a disaster.

 

I’ve recently watched footage of the incident, which showed flames reaching as high as seventy feet and brave servicemen, including Americans, working together to fight the fire. Those men received the British Empire Medal and the Navy and Marine Corps Medal. However, there was one man who led another to safety, at great risk to himself, but only received a written citation for bravery. This man was my grandfather, Richard Hocking.

 

He kept his hands over his head with his body stretched across the seats of his tanker. The tell-tale whistle of the Kraut bomb gave him just a few seconds to react. The whistling resumed after the explosion. It filled his entire world. It couldn’t be more bombs, he thought, could it? 

 

No. They would have landed by now. Was he dead? No. He wouldn’t be this terrified or being roasted alive if he was at the pearly gates. Unless… No. He was a good man. Just his ears coping with the shock of the explosion.

 

‘Sit up, Richard, you’re alive,’ his inner voice sounded remarkably like his mother. It was calm. Nothing like how he was feeling. His heart pounded against his chest. A metallic tang was all he could taste. ‘Sit up, you’re alive. You won’t be if you stay here. Your tank is empty. You know what that means.’

 

With his eyes still covered by his arms, he sat up straight. An empty tank was full of petrol fumes. He was not safe. The whole world was burning, and he happened to be in a bomb waiting to happen. He had to move, he had to survive. He moved his arms from his eyes.

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It was worse than he had been imagining. He whispered the name of his wife, Mable, and their children, Veronica, Cedric, John, Gloria, and David. He took a deep breath. He started to turn the key but stopped. What was that? Screams. Someone was screaming.

 

Richard Hocking saved his friend’s life that night. He bravely took the man into the driving cabin of his tanker and drove them through the flames to reach safety. The tanker could have exploded at any point, and I wouldn’t be writing this now if it had, but thankfully he made it through. I continue to wish that he had lived long enough to tell me this story himself, but he sadly passed away before I was born. 

 

It was very difficult to find any information from around May 1944. I went through four months’ worth of newspaper archives before finding an article written in September 1944. It reported on the Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, praising the bravery of those who fought the fire. These news articles, from September 1944, mention the incident in Swanvale, but along with Portsmouth, Southampton, and other locations that had been heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe during May 1944. The details were sparse. This was puzzling until realisation hit and the secrecy made sense. I found myself filling with even greater pride for my heroic grandfather.

 

A week following the German bombing of Swanvale, Falmouth, the Allied Forces launched the biggest military operation to ever take place, the Invasion of Normandy – commonly referred to as D-Day. The fuel at Swanvale was being prepared for the US 29th Division, who would be embarking from Falmouth to journey to Omaha beach. To speak of the attack, or to reveal the amount of petrol being stored, would have been far too risky. Operation Overlord, as the planned invasion was called, was a closely guarded secret and so, the decision was made to hide what really happened until after the invasion. It was kept out of all newspapers and anyone connected to the event had to keep quiet. 

 

In 1938, the Schleswig Holstein, a German naval cadetship with a hand-picked Aryan-looking crew, had stopped off the coast of Falmouth. The crew, equipped with high-quality camera equipment, were given shore leave and treated as welcome guests by the townspeople. They were free to take pictures of their time in the town, including around the docks and coastal defences. In fact, a few decades later when talking to his young daughter Margaret, my grandfather would recall the day he saw these German sailors taking photographs of Falmouth Docks. At the time, despite being slightly suspicious after growing up during the Great War, he didn’t raise the alarm or report the sighting. After all, this was peacetime and they were welcome guests of the nation. However, it was during and after the Swanvale bombing that my grandfather realised why the German soldiers were taking their photos. They were preparing for war while pretending to visit in peace. There is no doubt that these photographs were crucial in the Nazi planning of where to strike when bombing Falmouth.

 

The secrecy surrounding D-Day meant that my grandfather remained silent over his role in the Swanvale disaster. Richard Hocking saved a life on 30th May 1944. 

 

But when he was eventually awarded his citation, and when someone dared to call him brave, his response was: “I wasn’t brave, I just didn’t want to die.”