大象传媒

I was 7 years old when the war started, and I couldn't understand why Mum was crying, I thought there would just be a battle in a field up the road and that would be it. I must have got this idea from a film.
We lived close to Blackburn Aircraft company, where Dad and brother Geoff worked, and we often had to get up in the middle of the night and go into the air raid shelter, which Dad and Geoff had built in the back garden.
When friends of Mum and Dad's , who we called Auntie Hilda and Uncle Sam from Bradford came to stay for a holiday, this was about 1940 or 1941, once again we all had to get up and go into the shelter, all eight of us, but this time bombs started to fall, one whistled over our heads then thud, thud, thud, as the debris hit the shelter. When the noise died down, Dad opened the little door and we all peered out , expecting our house to be a pile of rubble, but it was still standing. The bomb had landed in the middle of the road about 50 yards away causing a lot of damage but no deaths.Next morning my sister Joan and I went off to Bradford with Uncle Sam and Auntie Hilda while the rest of the family stayed at home to clean up the mess. While there we often went into their cellar when the sirens went . One night we were sheltering when Bradford City Centre was heavily bombed. when we finally emerged from the cellar the city centre was ablaze. I don't remember being scared, perhaps I was too young to realise how dangerous it all was.
Eileen Bentley
East Yorkshire

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