大象传媒

The V2 which came down in Goodmayes Park, Ilford in February 1945 was a minor incident by the standards of the time as the casualties were comparatively light and there was little damage caused. It made a large crater in a grassed area of the park but apart from that it probably ceased to be a topic of conversation after a few days.
I still recall it very well however as I was ten years old at the time and walking to the local shops in Green Lane with my mother at the instant when it hit. The park was at the end of the parade of shops and my initial impression was of amazement at seeing windows falling out of a number of the shops for no apparent reason. I suppose I must have heard the explosion a split second later but my lasting memory has always been of those falling shop windows.
Almost forty years later the incident cropped up again when my wife was trying to determine when she had returned home from evacuation. As she had lived very close to the park I asked her if she had been living there when the V2 had come down. She certainly had and she remembered it very well even though she knew nothing about it at the time. On that day she had told her mother that she was going to the local Regent cinema with a friend but for some reason they changed their minds and had in fact gone to another cinema a couple of miles away. The explosion of the V2 shook the Regent which adjoined the park, ending the performance and emptying it very quickly. When my wife didn鈥檛 return home her mother went frantic not knowing where she was and fearing the worst. A couple of hours later the 鈥渕issing daughter鈥� duly turned up blissfully unaware of what had happened and of the worry she had caused. She was greeted with a barrage of questions from her family and when she cheekily asked what all the fuss was about she collected a painful slap around the head from a relieved but angry mother.

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