大象传媒

This story was submitted to the Peoples's War site by J. Marshall on behalf of Rodney Wallis and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions

I was a young lad during the war and lived in Burnham with my family and I have a few memories of growing up during this period.

Just near the Library was sited an air raid shelter and a siren. I can remember the first time it went of - I was coming home from Sunday School with my younger brothers and sisters. We must have been dawdling because the baker鈥檚 wife, Mrs Welsh came out and told us to hurry home quick!

One night a parachute mine came down in Princes Road which caused a lot of damage to houses there. We lived in Lilian Road which was very close, the blast blew in all the glass from my window onto my bed and I didn鈥檛 even wake up! But we were very lucky to get away so lightly, one girl I knew from school died with her family in the blast and their names are on the War Memorial.

One day we saw a dogfight and our plane was shot down by the German fighter, and crashed nearby. It was rumoured that Sir Paul Booth, a wealthy man who owned the foundry, sent his chauffeur driven car down to pick up the pilot. We never found out if this was true or not!

On the shore at Burnham there was a Bofors Gun 鈥� a heavy gun that was well placed to cover the Crouch Valley as they could see aircraft approaching. German aircraft were shot down over the marshes and us kids used to collect souvenirs from them. Smoke floats used to contain balsa wood so we kept our eyes peeled for them so we could use the wood for making model aircraft. But my Dad made us get rid of all our 鈥渟ouvenirs鈥� when he came back from the War.

During all this time school went on as normal but we had air raids at all times of the day because Burnham was on the route to London and the Docks.

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