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Campile () is a small village situated in County Wexford in the south of Ireland. It is south of the town of New Ross. As of the 2022 census, Campile had a population of 371 people.
In 1798, during the United Irishmen Rebellion, a rebel camp was located on nearby Slieve Coillte hill.
The first bomb dropped at Campile failed to detonate. Local man Teddy Drought, who was fifteen years old and worked in Shelburne Co-op at the time of the bombing, described witnessing the aircraft approach and the first bomb being dropped while sat on a wall with a friend. In an interview with RTÉ in 1990, Drought recalled the following scene:
"A bomb come down-we didn't know at the time it was a bomb-came down through the roof and down on the ground alongside the two of us (...) it busted, it didn't explode".
After dropping this first bomb, the plane circled the Campile area and dropped an additional three bombs over the Shelburne Co-op creamery and restaurant area. Approximately 150 employees worked at the Shelburne Co-op at the time of the bombing. Three women were killed during this daylight bombing – Mary Ellen Kent (30), her sister Catherine Kent (26), both from Terrerath, and Kathleen Hurley (27) from Garryduff.Nicholas Furlong (2026). 071713461X, Gill & MacMillan. 071713461X The bomb that exploded and killed the three women landed on the restaurant section of the Co-op where the women had been working. A total of four German bombs were dropped on the creamery and restaurant sections of Shelburne Co-op, and the railway line was also targeted. Greater loss of life was narrowly avoided due to approximately fifty employees leaving the restaurant after the lunch time rush shortly before the bomb was dropped.
The attack has never been fully explained, although some historians have suggested that it was a deliberate attack to discourage the supply of foodstuffs to wartime Britain. Despite this, a commonly given explanation for the bombing is that the German pilot had gotten lost and mistook Ireland's South-East for Wales.
Following the bombing, precautions were taken in an attempt to protect locals in the event of another attack. For example, sirens were installed in the village that would sound at the Shelburne Co-op any time a plane flew overhead for the duration of the war. In an interview with RTÉ reporter Michael Ryan in 1990, the area manager of Waterford Cooperative Tom Connery claimed that upon hearing these sirens locals would "lay awake at night wondering if it was them again".
On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the bombing, a memorial garden was dedicated to the memory of the three women who died.
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