Some memories are not so good

[computedshorty]

Some memories are not so good.

I witnessed this in Barry Road in the afternoon, August 1943, the man was leaning out of the top attic window in a house between the Plough and Goodrich Road, on that side of the road, we were held back by the Police and the buses were not allowed to pass.

Here is the News item.

BESIEGED MAN USES LAST SHOT ON HIMSELF

London Tragedy

From Our Own Correspondent

LONDON, Friday

After he had held off police and troops with a shotgun for 14 hours, Owen Munro, 29, of Barry rd, East Dulwich, shot himself early today.

The siege began yesterday after- noon, when Munro, who was considered mentally unstable, was told he would be taken to a mental institution.

When a doctor and assistants arrived he sat on a landing in the top part of the house with a double barrelled shotgun across his knees. He warned them he was going to shoot.

Police wearing gas masks used tear gas unsuccessfully. Munro's sister was persuaded to go up with a cup of tea containing a sleeping draught, but he did not drink it. He used his sister as a hostage, but she escaped during a gas attack.

Soon after midnight a military squad arrived with large smoke bombs. These did not affect Munro, because he retreated to his room, in which all the cracks were blocked. "It won't affect me; I'm not moving," he shouted.

When police attempted to infiltrate up the stairs, steel trays, which they were holding as shields, were riddled with shot.

Finally Munro ran out of ammunition, but kept the last cartridge for himself. Watchers in the street heard a cry of "Mother!" from an attic to which he had run. A single shot followed. Police and firemen battered down the door, and found Munro dead with a gunshot wound in the head.

Munro's father, mother, and sister were present during the entire incident.

[KidKruger]

Wow that's some story and a very sad thing to have witnessed.

[computedshorty]

Little did I know at that in two years I would leave school and become an apprentice carpenter, and be employed in repairing those houses that were bomb damaged by a series of bombs that devastated this whole area, leaving a space where a school was built, and I remember that I was helping a carpenter to replace an attic roof and window with no scaffold , I suspect it was the ones that was replaced as simple as we could make the pair near the bus stop, I remember the houses on the bend of Barry Road the rooms were so small they looked like a dolls house, with hardly any back garden.

[intexasatthe moment]

That's so sad .

Thank goodness things have improved a little now . Though I think being sectioned is never easy and always traumatic for all involved .

[computedshorty]

Every day there was something that you would not want to save but it happened, so the memory lingers.

During my junior school days my friends included one from Goodrich Road and one from Landcroft Road. The one from

Landells Road liked making modal aircraft from a kit my other mate liked to call round to see if he could help in his home just a few doors down from Gosling the Grocers on the corner of Lordship Lane. My mate also bought a kit and started to build it from Balsa Wood glue and tissue paper, he had to make a frame of the wing to do this he had to form a shape with pins banged into a sheet of wood, inside this he had to cut to size, and place in the template of pins, then glue together, dampen the balsa strips to be able to bend, some parts had to be cut from a sheet of balsa marked ready to cut with a razor blade, we learned that one edge had to be covered by a strip of Gummed tape to stop your fingers getting cut, when the wing was all glued and set , there was the frail tissue paper to be glued to the wing, then lightly brush a dope solution onto it to shrink it and become hard enough to paint.

Making the wing had taken some days so he had not seen Arthur for several days as it was school holidays.

My friend now wanted to show his finished wing to Arthur, so he called round carrying it carefully in the kit box it had come in.

Bill knocked at the door, asked if he could see Arthur, as he had made a bit of a modal,

The woman looked at him and then went back indoors, after a while a man came to the door, he simply said, ? Arthur died three days ago of appendicitis?. Bill was unable to answer and came away.

This affected him for a long while, it was a great shock to us all that this could happen, not caused by bombing but an illness.

[Laur]

This record looks like it mentions the siege in Barry Road;

Metropolitan Police Gallantry Awards 1939 - 1945

http://www.historybytheyard.co.uk/gallantry_list_1939-1945.htm

[KidKruger]

Well done, this is the post by Computed I was thinking of.

[Laur]

What took you so long to get here KidKruger ;)

[KidKruger]

Oh, got tied-up with this n that..

[Laur]

...oh yeh that ole excuse :)