- Contributed by听
- threecountiesaction
- People in story:听
- David Wilson
- Location of story:听
- Nottinghill / Shepherds Bush, London
- Background to story:听
- Civilian
- Article ID:听
- A5434904
- Contributed on:听
- 31 August 2005
This story was submitted to The People's War site by Stephen Horne for Three Counties Action on behalf of David Wilson and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
I was very young during the war and Mum related these rememberences to me. I was evacuated from Nottinghill to a village in Somerset. Some of the evacuees used to say going out from London was good. They didn't often talk about the coming home. Many said they would rather face Hitlers bombs than the locals where they were evacuated as they treated them like xxxx!
We would often go hop picking in the Kent fields on Uncle Tim's coal lorry and sometimes we used to see dog fights in the sky. Mum would say no matter who they were up in the sky, "Look at those poor bxxxxxxs!"
When we were in Shepherds Bush, Mum and my stepfather would give us words of advice like: when the doodlebug came over and you could hear the engine - run towards it! Because, when the engine stopped and you heard nothing, it would just glide down and explode. Next to where we lived there were gas works and it was these that the Germans were trying to bomb.
Towards the end of the war, I was 6 or 7 years old I remember playing in the snow near to Dale Dairies - a friend pushed down into a pit in the yard and I was taken to Du Cann Road Hospital with concussion where I stayed for 3/4 days
They were hard times and my older brother Bill and I used to collect wood from bomb sites. We would choose the pieces, bundle them up and sell them for firewood at threepence a bundle! They were large bundles and when we got the money we gave it to Mum and our Stepdad. He was a 'totter' (a rag and bone man). He used to go out carrying a large axe; knock on all the houses in a street and where no-one was at home he would go round the back and wallop the lead drain pipes until they fell loose and then later on sell all the lead he'd nicked!
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