大象传媒

I was 5 years old and lived in Sydenham, London SE26 when war broke out. I can clearly remember doodle bugs, air raid shelter experiences, shrapnel falling from the sky, machine gun fire from a German aeroplane, barrage balloons. I can remember women's voluntary service, gas masks.

One day, following a particularly bad air raid we emerged from the Anderson shelter (which was in our back garden). A doodle bug had dropped two roads away and we could not see our house as we came out from the shelter - we really thought our house had been bombed. In actual fact we couldn't see our house because of all the dust from the doodle bug. As it began to clear we could see our house still standing approx. 10 feet away from us.

The thing that I hated when I was experiencing the war was the sound of the siren to warn you of an air raid. It frightened me every time I heard it.

On another occasion I recall my next door neighbour saying to my mother by the shelter as he looked up to the sky "we are shooting a lot of planes down tonight". In actual fact they were German rockets and it was the first time we had seen them. We were innocently looking on.

One very sad, personal experience in my family was my aunt, uncle and two cousins aged, 16 and 13 years were told to go to the shelter because there was going to be a bad air raid. They followed this instruction and unfortunately a bomb dropped at the entrance of the shelter and they were all killed by the blast. This was in 1942, in Dover. If they had remained in their house they would not have been killed! We have recently found their grave which all four are buried in.

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