大象传媒

(This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from Three Counties Action at Bedford VE/VJ's commemorations on behalf of Michael Wilcox and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Wilcox fully understands the site's terms and conditions).

I don鈥檛 know how many bomb raids there were in Bedford but I can remember when I lived in Maitland Street in Bedford and it must have been around 1942 when I was 3 years old. They dropped bombs on Prebend Street, Ashburnham Road and Midland Road. In our garden there was debris of all sorts of items as a result of the blast caused form the bombs. Things like books and other items that didn鈥檛 belong to us. Thinking about it might well have been my earliest memory.

I remember one bombing raid when we were in the bedroom at night and my father got out of bed and lay across me as he was worried I might get hit, and he wanted to protect me. Other times when there was an air raid we used to go to a nearby shelter in Maitland Street, but thankfully it didn鈥檛 happen very often.

My mothers father was a First World War veteran and he lived in Prebend Street, He was sitting in the dinning room with his back toward the window eating his breakfast and the blast from the bombs dropping from the nearby railway sidings caused the windows to break and he was cut on the back of the head by the flying glass. I didn鈥檛 see it but my mother told me about it.

I can remember fruit was scarce and I鈥檇 never seen a banana until I was eight years old. There used to be shop selling sausages called Sears in Harpur Street, I can remember the long queues to get meat. My father worked for the food wholesale company called Swift鈥檚. The head office was based in America and they used to send food parcels. I can remember some butter coming once but by the time it got to us it was rancid, but mainly they sent tinned food.

During the war there was hardly any light on and I can remember the switch on the day after the war. The street lights came back on, along with shop lights and even some building were flood lit again. They flood lit St Peters Green and the light shone on the now pulled down Granada cinema on St Peters Street, it really did look magnificent to me at the time. When the war ended we had a street party.

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