16 Jan 1945, Barbara Anslow's diary

Heard planes coming over just when I went to get congee, and arrived back in room just before kyushu (air raid alarm) went.  A long time after, planes came round our area, and dive-bombed Waglan.

Bright and sunny.

I flew down to hospital bout 12.15; during tiffin planes came round again. They came in waves.  I saw 2 planes crash, one collided with the other; the first one had flames coming out of the tail and fell pretty quickly, fairly high up on this side of the Peak.  The other fell very slowly; one pilot baled out, another airman had his parachute out but couldn't get free of the plane.  One piece of wing was slowly turning over and over in the air for a long time.
 
There was a rumour that leaflets were dropped, but turned out only to be packing from ack-ack shells.  Spent alot of time up in Ward 4 with Fleur (Cheape, aged 4); she was frightened but kept her self control very well.  ((We crouched together under a small table in the ward. I knew her as she lived with her mother on the landing near us in Block 3, Married Quarters.))
 
Apparently the planes were after a machine gun on the end of the gaol.  A couple of bombs (or shells) landed on the rocks beside the gaol about 200 yards away from us at the hospital.  Pom-pom guns, mahine guns, blast - terrifying.  Mum says it was like that in the Jockey Club hospital during the battle.
 
The Operating Theatre window blew in, and some windows in Ward 6.   Some one said they thought Jap HQ (on a knoll in the camp) had been hit, then Watanabe came to the hospital, saying 2 people in Bungalow C had been hurt, one 'on the point of death'; he asked for help.  Volunteers went off with stretchers etc., and about ten minutes later, Mr Owen Evans came tearing down and said that nearly every one in Bungalow C had been killed.

Then 14 were reported dead:

• Mr & Mrs A. Hyde Lay
• Mr. A. Holland
• Mr & Mrs E. Searle
• Mrs. A. E. Guerin
• Mrs. Davies ((sister of our friend Norman Whitley who was also in Stanley))
• Mr. A. J. Dennis
• Mr. G. Stopani-Johnson
• Mrs I. Johnson (whose husband died in Stanley last year)
• Mr. G. Willoughby
• Mr S. F. Bishop
• Mr. Oscar Eager
• Mr S.F. Balfour ((for a short time prewar he was my boss at the Secretariat)).

Didn't get up from hospital till almost 6pm, when Clifton had come down with Mr Blake on a stretcher - who'd got shrapnel in leg while rice-grinding. Clifton raced Olive and I up the slope to the Married Q., and more planes were coming over. Clifton had been up at the bungalow to help dig, and to take Father Hessler.  The bomb fell in courtyard between Tony's ex-room and garage. ((Tony Cole of ARP Dept., who had only recently moved out from Bunglow C.))

We slept in our clothes.

((The remains of one of the American planes that crashed on this day were located in 2011. See: http://gwulo.com/node/15925))

((Barbara's future brother-in-law, Clifton Large, picked up one of the American bullets from that raid, and it is still in the family's possession today:

Bullet from Jan 1945 raid on Stanley, by jhayesTucson