WW2, Rare piece of Location and Dated Shrapnel from the Leeds Blitz, 1940.

Since the original listing we have uncovered further information; the bomb would have been dropped by the Luftwaffe unit 'Kampfgeschwader 4', specifically 3/K.G.4(1), probably from an He111 bomber. Please refer to the x2 additional photographs of the target maps for the date of the drop that we have added to the listing.

Further information can be found at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kampfgeschwader_4

Interesting relic from the Leeds Blitz, a large (8/9 " across the base) and extremely rare piece of German shrapnel inscribed via a copper plate ‘FIRST BOMB ON LEEDS 02.10 COPLEY HILL 25 AUGUST 1940’.

The likely target was the London North Eastern Region Copley Hill five track railway locomotive shed and engineering works.

A truly unique item and priced to reflect rarity.

The Tony Harrison poem "Shrapnel" relates to the raid on Beeston Harrison, at the time a child, was sheltering in the cellar of a house on Tempest Road in Beeston, only 2 miles from Copley Hill.

Leeds poet Tony Harrison

A summer day with all the windows wide
when suddenly a storm-presaging breeze
makes the scribbled papers that I'm sorting slide
on to the floor. They're these you're reading, these.
I rummage through my many paperweights,
grandad's knuckleduster, this one from Corfu--
a rosette from the Kaiser's palace gates,
and shrapnel from an air-raid I lived through.

Down in our cellar, listening to that raid,
those whistles, those great shudders, death seemed near,
my mother, me, my sister, all afraid
though my mother showed us kids no sign of fear.
Maybe the blackout made the ground too dark
for the aimer to see the target for his load
but all the bombs fell on to Cross Flatts Park
and not on to our house in Tempest Road.

And not on to our school, Cross Flatts CP.
A hit would mean no school and I'd be spared
old 'Corky' Cawthorne persecuting me.
If he'd 've copped a bomb would I have cared?
'Don't talk like that!' I heard my mother chide
though she didn't know that Corky used to tell
her frightened little son that when he died,
because not christened, he would go to hell.

On the rare occasions that I chose to speak
in Corky's RI class I'd make him mad,
trying out bits of calculated cheek
and end up being called 'a wicked lad.
Sir, if you've had your legs off, sir, like say
poor Mr Lovelock down Maude Avenue
will you get 'em back on Judgement Day?
Does God go round and stick 'em back wi'glue?

Corky Cawthorne's cruel and crude RI
put me off God for life. I swore I'd go
neither to Hell below nor Heaven on high,
and Beeston was all of both I'd ever know.
He also taught music which he made me hate,
not quite as much as God, into my teens.
I'd never 've come to music even late
if that raid had blown me into smithereens.

I went to see the craters the bombs made
first thing in the morning and us lads
collected lumps of shrapnel from the raid
to prove we'd seen some war to absent dads.
There was a bobby there who didn't mind
craters being used by kids so soon for play
or hunting for shrapnel that he helped us find.
Clutching my twisted lump I heard him say:

'appen Gerry must 've been 'umane
or there'd 've been a bloodbath 'ere last neet.
They'd be flattened now woud t' 'ouses in Lodge Lane,
Tempest Road, all t' 'arlechs, Stratford Street.
He dumped his bombs in t'park and damaged nowt
missing t' rows of'ouses either side.
'umane! 'umane! And 'im a bloody Kraut!
And but for him, I thought, I could have died.

So now I celebrate my narrow squeak,
the unseen foe who spared our street in Leeds,
and I survived to go on to learn Greek
and find more truth in tragedy than creeds.
I stroke my shrapnel and I celebrate,
surviving without God until today,
where on my desk my shrapnel paperweight
stops this flapping poem being blown away.

A flicker of faith in man grew from that raid
where this shrapnel that I'm stroking now comes from,
when a German had strict orders but obeyed
some better, deeper instinct not to bomb
the houses down below and be humane.

*Note:
Shipping may be high due to the weight of this item.

Code: 389