大象传媒

Following the bombing in Kensal Rise, we moved to a lovely house just on the edge of Streatham Common: at the bottom of the garden - called "the nuttery" because of all the lovely nut trees - was a gate where you could go through to get onto the Common itself.
We had been there for only about six weeks and - during one raid - my parents and I were in the "table shelter" (can't remember the correct name) where you could shut the sides up and be safe inside; we slept in there too and I felt really secure there, in a small, strong and safe little haven with my parents so close. Anyway, this raid was a bad one (the sounds were comparable to going through the car wash with bangings and thuds on the roof. Multiply that about ten times, with an earthquake thrown in and you may get the picture). I think it was a bombing raid as such, with planes rather than the flying bombs, but can't be sure. Again (as in Kensal Rise) we were listening for them and heared it coming. When the raid started, we knew we were for it and sure enough - we were! We could hear the sounds of the ceiling crashing down, broken glass etc. all of which seemed to last a long time. Then they all went away. We opened the sides of the table onto a frighteningly different scene: instead of the two big windows, there were only two big holes in the wall: no glass, no curtains or anything. The floor was crunchy with all the plaster and rubble from the ceiling and you couldn't walk on it properly. The door was stuck and my Father had to kick it open for us to get out. It opened sort of skew-whif, sideways and we could squeeze out.
But the worst thing of all was the screams from my young teenage aunts in the next room. That was the most frightening thing of all. We thought they must have been
all horribly wounded or maimed, and they in turn thought we were all dead. When we managed to squeeze out, they threw themselves on us: "Thank God you're alive!" Then we all had to make a very quick exit as the house was in danger of falling down. It hadn't been a direct hit on us, but - as it turned out - a neighbour's house, but as the blast had gone the other way, our house didn't "fall on top of us". We walked down the road in a tight little group, no suitcases of course, just handbags, glad to be together. On passing the neighbour's bungalow which had been hit, their brick built garage consisted of only the roof - perfect and untouched, lying on the ground. Inside the remains of the garage was their Rolls Royce - flat as a pancake. The graown-ups had a good deal to say about that and it was good to have a laugh about the poor old car.
Then it was off to the ladies with the tea urns again and that most wonderful sound of the cockney voices and the cheerful, kindly people. I am so grateful to them for their lovely, joking, kindness of the kind which helped Londoners get over the latest bombing raid, brush ourselves down and look to the jobs which needed doing next.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.