Robert Redfern was spending an off-duty evening on Saturday 8^th March 1941 at the Café de Paris in central London. The club was advertised as a safe haven by the maître d', [Martin Poulson] who stipulated that the four solid storeys of masonry above were ample protection.

This tragically proved not to be the case when two 50K landmines came through the Rialto roof straight onto the dance floor. Eighty people were killed, including the maître d’ whose words had come back to haunt him. Had the bomb been dropped an hour later, the casualties would have been even higher.

Famously, one survivor was cheered by the crowd outside, when, being carried out on a stretcher, he shouted to them "At least I didn't have to pay for dinner!".

At the time of his death Robert was 26 years old and is buried at Brookwood Military Cemetery, Surrey .

Son of Alfred Henry Redfern of Dorchester, Dorset.

A copy of this story is available to download here.

See also the Commonwealth War Graves Commission permanent digital memorial, ‘Evermore: Stories of the fallen’  relating to:- P/Officer Robert Brook REDFERN