大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by a volunteer from Lincoln CSV Action Desk on behalf of Ray Evans and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Evans fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

There is one more incident which I remember vividly and that is one night mom and dad decided to go out for a drink to the local British Legion. Well the sirens had just started to wail when we set off and we had to hurry to get to the Club in case anything happened. We were also aware that the ARP Wardens would tell us quite sharply to get to a shelter or get off the streets.

We got to the club all in one piece and mom and dad enjoyed their drink while Bert and I had shandies. When it was time to go back home the All Clear had not sounded but all the people had to clear the premises so off we set with torches at the ready. With the black out it was pitch black and your torch was blacked out so that a very small area of light was all that showed through.

When I recall that night it was like the blind leading the blind, all in a single file and you had no idea where you were, just guessed that you were heading in the right direction. As we neared our road there was what we called the Plantation just before it. We edged closer to the Plantation and dad lead us into our road, only it wasn鈥檛 our road, it was the first house with garage doors open and we all filed into it and came face to face with a blank wall! If Mr Lavell, who lived in that house, had come out then and locked his garage up for the night, I don鈥檛 know what would have happened.

If only that had been the excitement for the night but it wasn鈥檛 because as we filed out and made our way to our house, the ack-ack guns opened up to fire at the German bombers going back after their raid elsewhere. So we hurried on and just as we got to our front door mom and dad went inside with me behind them, with Bert the last to come in. Suddenly there was a crash behind us and next morning Bert and I went to see what it was and we saw a piece of shrapnel from the guns which had just missed Bert, so he was lucky. Bert put his piece in his tin of shrapnel collections that he had.

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