PETER Windows will never forget the night a stick of German bombs dropped on the Forest – he was in bed just 30 yards away!

Peter, who lives at Bream, was just nine when the night-time raider dropped six bombs at The Tufts, in the woods between Lydney and Bream.

The incident, he says, illustrated why many local people built air raid shelters – at least two local properties have recently been advertised in the Review with shelters still intact.

Peter was tucked up in bed with his mother at his grandfather, Albert Windows', house when the bombs were dropped at 3am on a day in May 1941.

"There was a massive crater outside which was caused by two bombs, and there was another crater a couple of hundreds yards away.

"It caused quite a stir but there was no real damage. The house down below us had a chimney knocked off – the people who lived there had moved from Swansea to get away from bombs and didn't expect to get one in the middle of the woods," he said.

There was a further shock in store later in the day.

"We kids were out and about picking up shrapnel when there was a massive blast higher up in the woods – it was a bomb with a 12 hour delayed timer device," said Peter.

Their own home was hardly damaged – "I think a tile or two was broken by clods of flying earth. Grandfather was very careful. Every night he insisted on the windows being covered with mattresses and it probably saved us from injury that night," he said.

• Next week: Tell us where the bombs dropped.