Leslie Lewis

 The Swansea Raid of 17 January 1941

In the dark winter of 1941, Swansea was already living under the constant threat of German air raids. Yet nothing in the early months of the war quite prepared the town for the ferocity of the bombing it endured on the night of 17 January 1941. That evening, almost 90 enemy aircraft crossed the coast of South Wales, unleashing close to 200 high-explosive bombs and hundreds of incendiaries over the built-up areas of Swansea.

South Wales Evening Post

The targets were not military bases or docks alone, but the very streets where ordinary people lived. The eastern districts of St Thomas, Hafod, and Bonymaen bore the brunt of the destruction, their narrow terraces offering little shelter against the rain of fire and rubble. Casualty lists compiled afterwards recorded at least 55 dead, with some estimates rising to nearly 60, and many more seriously injured. These figures made the January raid Swansea’s worst single attack so far in the war.  The South Wales Evening Post published an article on the 15^th February, in which it featured a photograph, of the destruction of the interior of Danygraig Congregational Chapel.

For those who survived, the raid left indelible scars. Families picked through rubble to salvage fragments of their homes, while rescue parties worked tirelessly to dig survivors and bodies from collapsed buildings. The raid also revealed the vulnerability of Swansea: though it was a vital port and industrial center, the pattern of bombing showed that entire residential areas were just as exposed as the docks.

Leslie Lewis
Bethel Chapel, Sketty
credit - findagrave

In retrospect, historians view the January 17 raid as a grim prelude. Barely a month later, the town would face the infamous “Three Nights’ Blitz” of 19–21 February 1941, when wave upon wave of bombing devastated the city centre, destroying thousands of homes, shops, churches, and civic buildings. Compared with that onslaught, the January raid is sometimes overshadowed — yet for the families who lost loved ones, it was every bit as devastating.

On Evans Terrace in Swansea, the January raid left a particularly harrowing toll. At No. 14, 17-year-old Leslie Lewis was killed when his home was destroyed; he was later laid to rest at Bethel Chapel, Sketty. Just next door at No. 13, three members of the Lodwig family — Daniel, Elizabeth Ann, and their daughter Gladys May — also lost their lives. At   No. 15, the youngest victim on the street, nine-year-old Thomas George Parker, was among the dead. In the days that followed, the bodies of these neighbours were recovered from the rubble and taken to Wycliffe Hall mortuary on Clarence Street, their names solemnly entered into the city’s register of civilian war casualties. Leslie Lewis who was later buried at Bethel Chapel, Sketty