Civilians sheltering in the vaults under the Phoenix
Brewery.
To Dover goes the dubious honour
of being the place where the first bomb fell on British
soil. It was Christmas Eve 1914, the weather bright
sunny, when at around midday a German plane was spotted
over the town. Its pilot Lieutenant von Prondzynski
leaned over the side of his plane and saw Dover
Castle and the great naval harbour
some 5,000 feet below him. He lifted his bomb in both
hands as his knees held his “joy stick”, heaving the
bomb over the side of the plane he let it fall.
The bomb dropped towards the Castle
but Lt. Prondzynski was about 400 yards short of his
target, no mean achievement in days when bomb-aiming
instruments were unknown. The tiny bomb landed in
the garden adjoining St
James’ Rectory and made a crater about four or
five feet deep. The blast smashed some windows in
the Rectory and knocked the gardener, Mr James Banks,
out of a tree he was pruning.
