大象传媒

One month before my third birthday, in February 1944, I was at home in Lyham Road, Clapham, with my mother, grandmother and baby sister who was teething and wouldn't settle. At about ten o'clock we were brought downstairs. Almost immediately, there was a shattering sound that went on and on. We had no warning, no time to escape to the shelter.

Our mother and grandmother leaned over us, bending towards the chimney wall. That was the only wall in the house left standing. Our bedroom was now debris scattered down the stairs, and a broken skylight balanced precariously on the bannister. I remember sitting, freezing, crying, in a wheelbarrow amongst the scraps we had been able to salvage.

Next day our father came home on leave to find Lyham Road devastated. No-one could tell him if we were still alive.

The intense shock and cold brought on pneumonia, and my life was eventually saved by the pre-penicillin wonder drug that had saved Winston Churchill, M and B tablets. This experience has taught me never to say that children are too young to understand shock, fear or grief, or that somehow young children are more resistant to disaster than adults.

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