'They had to move the rubble to come and get me'
86–year–old Ruby Currell was one of only three children to survive an inferno that engulfed her classroom after a USAF bomber crashed into her Lancashire school in August 1944
Richard Ansett
- Kate Battersby
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When Ruby Currell was five years old, a USAF Liberator bomber crashed into her school in the Lancashire village of Freckleton. The accident, in the midst of a sudden storm on 23 August 1944, killed 61 people, 38 of them infants at Holy Trinity School.
“As long as I live, I will keep the memory of the other children alive,” Currell says, at her Freckleton home, where she keeps scrapbooks filled with newspaper cuttings about the disaster.
Marking VE Day is important to 86-year-old Currell, but Britain’s worst aviation accident in the Second World War is something she carries with her every day. She wants future generations to remember those whose lives were lost. “In Freckleton, we hold a service on the anniversary every year,” she says. “They look to me to keep the memory going.”
Ruby Currell survived the Freckleton air crash disaster by hiding under a desk. Courtesy of Ruby Currell
The 20 boys and girls in Currell’s class had only started school the day before the air crash. Currell, then Ruby Whittle, was one of only three children to survive the inferno that engulfed her classroom. Two teachers, Jennie Hall, who had just finished her training, and Louisa Hulme, who was due to retire that Christmas, were also killed.
The B-24 Liberator bomber, fully loaded with almost 2,800 gallons of aviation fuel, was on a test flight from an airfield in the nearby village of Warton. At the time, Freckleton was dubbed “Little America” because of its proximity to the airbase, where more than 10,000 American airmen were stationed.
When the violent storm struck, the 25-ton bomber crashed into the centre of the village, destroying three houses, the local café and the infants wing of Holy Trinity School.
Currell has a clear memory of events that morning: “Around 10.30am our teacher Miss Hall was about to read us a story, but we could hear a storm approaching and it suddenly got dark as night. Miss Hall had to put the lights on. There was so much noise from the thunder and the rain… and then there was an almighty bang. I saw the teacher fall over and a girl fall from her desk, so I dived under mine – it was wartime, that’s what we were taught. It was terrifying.”
The clock on the classroom wall stopped at 10.47am. “There was rubble all around me. Then I saw two faces in a little gap in the doorway: the headmaster and an American airman. They couldn’t get in. They were beckoning me, but I wouldn’t move. They had to move the rubble to come and get me.”
Currell spent 18 months in hospital, including six months in the airbase hospital. Fifty per cent of her body was burned, across all her limbs, her shoulders and face. Years of then-pioneering skin grafts would follow.
Bing Crosby, who was entertaining troops in Britain, came to visit. “He held my fingers and asked if I would like him to sing, so I chose White Christmas and Don’t Fence Me In because my mum liked those songs. But he was too upset to sing by our bedsides, so he went into the corridor and sang there.”
Eight months after the air crash, VE Day passed unnoticed as Currell recovered in hospital. It was early 1946 before she returned to her village and her old school.
“There wasn’t a family in Freckleton untouched by what happened,” she says. “So many bereaved parents. Some lost their only child and were too old to have more. I didn’t want to go back to that school, but it was only the infants’ classroom that was destroyed. The rest was undamaged, so I had to.”
But the sound of thunder would fill her with fear: “If I heard it when I was walking in the village, I could go to the nearest door and they’d let me in because they all understood. They would give me a biscuit and a cup of tea, and send someone to get my mum.”
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“It makes me afraid, even to this day. It’s still very hard not to get frightened. The crash affected my whole life.”
Authors
Kate Battersby
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