大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War Site by Three Counties Action, on behalf of Joyce Page, and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

During the beginning of the war, I lived in a council house in West Hendon in London with my mum and dad and two of my married sisters who lived in the same road, a few doors away. Every night they would come to our house and play cards and as soon as we heard the eerie sounds of the sirens, we would all make a quick departure to the air-raid shelters, which were in the park just at the back of our house, this went on for several months but it was always a false alarm because we never heard any planes or bombs dropping. Then suddenly in 1940 everything changed, the German planes started coming over and many bombs were dropped. This frightened Mrs Moffat, a friend of my Mum鈥檚 who lived in an upstairs flat a few doors away, that she decided to move to a downstairs flat on the opposite side of the road.

One night when my family were playing cards as usual, once more the sirens screeched out and before they could dash to the shelter, our house was shaking, after an almighty blast and people were screaming, Mum said, 鈥淨uick let鈥檚 go to the shelter,鈥� we stepped outside the back door into the pitch blackness, we were knee deep in bricks and rubble. We managed to find our way to the air raid shelters. Once there, my mum said, 鈥淥h! Dear, I鈥檝e left my handbag in the kitchen,鈥� she was like the Queen, wherever she went her handbag went with her. She said, 鈥淛oyce let鈥檚 go and find it,鈥� I said, 鈥淣o! It鈥檚 too dangerous, the house may collapse on us,鈥� but she persuaded me to go back with her. We got into the back garden, hardly seeing a hand in front of us, when suddenly I fell into a huge hole in the ground, with my arms balancing either side of it, my legs were hanging in a void. I screamed, 鈥淢um help me,鈥� my mum shouted, 鈥淲here are you?鈥� I called, 鈥淒own here.鈥� She managed to pull me out of a man-hole, where the lid had been blown off, luckily there was no sewage down there. Thank God, we eventually found her handbag, then picked our way through the rubble back to the shelter. The next morning we looked at the horrendous havoc, that the bomb had caused, many people had been killed, including Mrs Moffat, who had moved for safety to a downstairs flat. Had she remained in her other house, she would have been safe with her family because although the house had been damaged, it wasn鈥檛 flattened to the ground like that she had moved to, - was it fate?

In 1942 I joined the ATS and was stationed on The Isle of Sheppey with the 628 A.A.Battery. I was a driver and drove anything from a utility van to a 15 cwt lorry. All of us girls slept in a very chilly Nissan hut, which was located, not far from the cliff tops and overlooking the sea. One night the girls were startled when we heard a peculiar sound of throbbing coming from overhead, we all dashed out of the hut, looked up in the sky and saw these rocket like machines, sweeping very, very, low over the tops of the cliffs, - we didn鈥檛 know it then but it was our first sight of a Doodle Bug. Our guns in the camp started booming out but they couldn鈥檛 hit one of them because the Doodle Bugs flew in so low, it was impossible for the guns to shoot them down because they would have been shooting at ground level and at us!

Once the Doodle Bugs had crossed the coastline, they suddenly started to climb higher and making their way towards London. Once the engine cut out, people knew that it was going to dive-bomb in a certain area, blasting buildings and people to bits.

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