大象传媒

We had an Anderson air raid shelter in our back garden, it was set about three and a half feet into the ground.We never used it,when there was an air raid most of the people in our street stood outside often at the corner of our garden,watching the search lights following the German bombers ,and watching the shells shooting up into the sky trying to hit the planes . Standing outside was a silly thing to do I know but people did just that.
The shells were a sight to see,a red line of dots shooting up into the sky.In the morning after a raid on the way to school most of the children picked up shrapnel,( fragments of metal) which had been flying about during the air raid the night before,this is why it was silly to stand outside during a raid,any one could have been hit by a piece of the metal flying about.( the fragments were from exploding shells and bombs). One night a land mine was dropped from a German plane.A land mine was a very large bomb dropped by parachute,luckliy it did not explode, we were told if it had it would have removed a good part of Washington,it fell in private grounds named Cooks Hall. Beloning to Mr Sherwood Hunter. He was the owner of a metal works named Joseph Cook. The bomb was taken care of by the army bomb disposal they exploded it and it left a massive crater in the woods.I often thought if it had exploded may be I would not be here today writing this article.It must have been meant to hit the chemicle works or Cooks works or both, the two works were not to far apart. My uncle some how got hold of a piece of the parachute cord which was about three feet long and about one inch in diameter made of a beautiful green silk material.The cord became my dressing gown cord for a long time and I can not remember just what happened to that cord.I think one explaination could be my mother could have got rid of it along with a lot of my childish things when I was called into the forces later.When I was sent Germany to be attached to 652 AOP Squadron in Detmold.

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