Survivor recalls wartime tragedy

Mrs Wood is upset there is no memorial to the tragedy in the village

A woman whose family was wiped out in a war-time tragedy 65 years ago has said she still has no idea how she survived.

Ina Wood was 12-years-old when an RAF aircraft on a night training flight crashed into her home in Dundrennan, in Dumfries and Galloway.

The house was devastated, killing her parents, brother and sister, as well as the two RAF airmen.

Mrs Wood told BBC Scotland she still heard the screams of her siblings when she closed her eyes.

Incredibly, she survived despite sharing a bed with her eight-year-old sister Nancy, who perished when the Beaufighter came down on Dundrennan, clipping the roof of a neighbouring cottage before ploughing into the gable end of Ms Wood's house.

I tried to lift a beam that was trapping my brother and sister and I burnt my fingers Ina Wood

Her father James Hamilton, mother Georgina and brother Henry, 10, were also killed.

As she looked at photographs on the crash site ahead of Saturday's 65th anniversary of the tragedy, Mrs Wood told BBC Scotland: "I still don't know how I got out of that."

She recalled: "I can remember falling among plaster and wood beside my brother and sister - the heat and the smoke were terrible.

"I could still hear my brother and sister screaming. I was screaming myself. I tried to lift a beam that was trapping my brother and sister and I burnt my fingers.

"The next thing was a lady came and took me into her house and put me in the bath. I remember I was burnt on my back and it was smarting."

She spent a week in hospital in nearby Kirkcudbright, where she lives today, before going to stay with her grandparents.

Mrs Wood said she could not remember being told her mother, father, brother and sister were dead.

The crash completely destroyed Mrs Wood's house

But she does recall people wearing black suits on what must have been the day of the funeral.

Even 65 years later, she cannot explain how she had survived when the little sister she slept next to died.

"I can remember I was next to the wall so she was more in the middle of the room - whether that saved me I just don't know," she added.

"I can remember it as if it was five minutes ago, and if I close my eyes I can still hear my brother and sister screaming."

The crash site was never redeveloped and today serves as a garden for the neighbouring house.

Mrs Wood will visit the family grave on Saturday, and said it was "upsetting" there was no memorial to her family or the dead RAF crew in the village.

"Even if it was a little plaque it would be nice, but there is nothing", she said.

Jean Brown, curator of a Dundrennan history exhibition, said Mrs Wood's family were among only six civilians killed in the local area during World War II, and added her voice to calls for a permanent memorial to be built in memory of the village's blackest day.