IF not for Gordon Kew's dad much of Morecambe may well have gone up in smoke!

For Gordon's dad, Thomas, was the man who drove through the flames with a quarter of a million live shells the night the White Lund Industrial Estate exploded.

His story has never been properly told to the public, until now, because it was 1917, the height of World War One, and all news was strictly censored.

So despite at least 11 people being killed, thousands evacuating their homes and the explosion being heard as far away as Burnley the night of October 1, 1917, all the local press at the time could report was: "explosion at shell factory in North of England!"

Thomas Kew was employed to shunt trucks of live shells but he was off duty when he heard the initial bang. Everyone else was running away but Thomas ran into work. If he hadn't have moved those 49 trucks with the live shells the consequences would have been unthinkable.

For his efforts he received a medal for 'conspicuous bravery' from the king. Thomas - a working man with a young family - couldn't afford any clothes fit for Buckingham Palace or to go to London. But in the end the company paid for a half crown pair of second hand boots for Thomas's big day and he bought a second hand suit.

That was all he ever received for his heroics. But still he paid for it for years to come. Thomas was a nervous wreck and couldn't return to work. Today he would have undoubtedly have been diagnosed as having post traumatic stress having witnessed the tragedies of that night. But back then there was nothing.

He went back to his home town of Blackburn. Unable to work, life was a real struggle for the Kews but eventually Thomas returned to the catering trade.

He came back to Morecambe - with Gordon in tow - in 1931. Gordon (pictured) remembered his father: "He was a retiring man. He would never talk about what happened that night even when he came back to Morecambe.

"But when our family fortunes were very hard again he did go to the town hall. They gave him a job collecting deckchairs on Morecambe beach."

Read about the full story of the great explosion at White Lund - and many other stories of Lancaster and Morecambe in the years 1900 to 1949 - in our Lancashire 2000 magazine. There are still some copies left at Lancaster and Morecambe tourism offices, W H Smith in Lancaster and all good newsagents.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.