大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War website by Steven Turner a Peoples War Story Gatherer with the 大象传媒 Radio Cambridgeshire Action Desk. It was submitted at Duxford Museum during their VE celebrations on behalf of Joan West and has been added to the site with her permission.
She fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

"I was 9 years old, living in Holloway, London, when the war began. I remember The Blitz. A bomb destroyed our house in 1941. The blast buried us in the Anderson Shelter. We were in there for ages before they dug us out.

After that had happened we moved to Grandma鈥檚. We were there for three months before we got bombed again, this time a landmine exploded in the road outside. We were actually in the house. It didn鈥檛 collapse but it was shattered so we went back to Holloway again. It wasn鈥檛 long before another bomb blew out the windows of our house. It brought the wardrobe down on my sister and I. It was the middle of the night, the rest of the family were downstairs and we all had to be rescued. With bombs dropping my sister and I started walking to our Grandma鈥檚 again. An ARP man grabbed us and put is in a shelter. We just wanted to get away.

I remember the Battle of Britain as well. We were out walking to the shops and we were machine-gunned by a fighter. The bullets smashed the shop鈥檚 windows. This happened another time at home when we had sand bags up to within a foot of the top of our downstairs windows. A fighter strafed the street there as well."

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