大象传媒

AN INTERVIEW WITH THOMAS BROMMELL

I was 9 years olds when war broke out. I was at home at Stourport. I lived there for about the first 4years of the war. My family moved to London due to circumstances. My Mother needed an operation, and she was advised that she might get better treatment if we moved to London. We went to live in Tottenham, the whole family moved. By then the bombing had eased quite a bit because the Germans were busy on the Russian front. We got the occasional raid, and towards of the end of our stay in London we got V1鈥檚 and V2鈥檚.

I went to school in London and we ever hardly missed a day. On top of that my Parents went to work, and they were making coffins, there was quite a market for them in those days. My Mother worked a 51/2 day week and because of this, she used to give me (because I was the eldest child) on a Friday night, a 拢5 note and I would go out on a Saturday morning to get the shopping for the family for the whole week.

One particular memory was when we were being bombed. The advice was to get under the table, and the banging was incessant. I was under the impression that the Germans were coming up the road to get us. It wasn鈥檛 until later that I discovered there was a battery of AA guns down the road, and it was these that were making all the noise!

We left London when my youngest brother was about 6 years old. By this time we weren鈥檛 getting any sleep due to the air raid warnings, and sometimes we would have to get up five or six times a night, and we still had to go to school the next day. My youngest brother began to look so ill, due to lack of sleep, that in the end my Parents decided take us away from London for a holiday and we stayed with my sister in Stourport, and we never went back to London.

My Father and I, worked on a farm when we moved back to Stourport, and I stayed on there for 13 years.

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by June Woodhouse (volunteer) of the CSV Action Desk at 大象传媒 Hereford and Worcester on behalf of Thomas Brommell (author) and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.