大象传媒

The storyteller lived in London throughout the war and was ten years old when he experienced the first bombing of the capital. Living at Forest Hill, away from the centre of the city and overlooking the main part of London, gave him a grandstand view of the bombing that took place during the Battle of Britain. Huge fires lit up the skies, flames and smoke were clearly seen from his vantage point and the sound of high explosive bombs were clearly audible. The family had an Anderson shelter in the garden but quickly gave up using it as it proved uncomfortable so chose to sleep in the Morrison shelter, a steel table they slept under inside the house. Many windows in the house were blown in at one time or another as a result of the bombing.

The storyteller's mother worked for 'The Ministry of Food' in Newcross during the war. She would cycle to work from home. In 1944 she heard a V1 doodle-bug rocket overhead. The engine cut out so she knew it would soon crash to earth. She dived into a doorway and there was a loud explosion close by. A factory in Nunhead Lane, Peckham Rye that she had just cycled past seconds before was hit and many were killed. She carried on to work although when she returned home that evening she was still very shocked by the experience.

Months later the family received a phone call from their grandmother made from a telephone box near Blackheath. German V2 rockets were targeted at the capital by this stage of the war. A V2 landed about one hundred metres away. The grandmother couldn't see the rocket but remembers seeing the local church swaying as she passed out. The storyteller's mother heard the grandmother cry out and the phone went dead as she heard a loud bang. Thinking that the grandmother had been killed his mother rushed over to Blackheath. The grandmother had cuts to her legs caused by flying glass and was taken to hospital.The woman in the next phoebox had been killed. The grandmother recovered and lived to the age of ninety four so there were few lasting effects!

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