- Contributed by听
- jlgibson
- Background to story:听
- Civilian
- Article ID:听
- A8550209
- Contributed on:听
- 15 January 2006
Grace Sergant:
I was 18 when the war broke out. My family and I all went to church in the morning and it was a nice sunny morning and we were told that the war had started. After we were told we could here the sirens going off.
I was 18 and I worked in a pyjama factory. I used to go out with my friends and go to the picture house. We used to get the tube, as it was easy to use and only 20 minutes away from the centre of London.
Once, where St Paul's Cathedral is, you could see the dome of it and all around it was flames where there had been a bomb dropped.
Because the tube station was underground people use to go down there for shelter. There were so many people down there, that there was only a small pathway for us to walk along. Everyone down there was happy and at Christmas they had a party down there with music and people were dancing. There were disasters as well though because on top of one of the tube station there was a air shaft and a bomb went down there. Everyone who was down there died.
Things calmed down though and at some points everything was normal. Food wasn't too bad you had enough. Some times you would go out and shrapnel would fall on you from the bombs. One night I was walking home and I found a little puppy walking around in the road. I couldn't just leave it there so I picked him up and took him home with me. When I got home my dad got his old jacket and put him inside it for his bed. In the morning we couldn't find him and it was because he had got in the sleeve of the coat so my dad had to cut the coat to get him out. We kept that dog until it was 14 years old. Some nights you
would lay in bed and the noise would be constant from all the planes going over. You would look up at the sky sometimes and all you could see was planes.
We were lucky in the war as my family were safe and didn't get hurt. It was just something you lived through and I hope that it never happens again. My brother was working on the rail way and he had an accident where he lost his leg. He had a wooden leg made for him and his friends put a hole in it and he carried all their papers and documents. We used to get the Doodlebugs as well. They looked like aeroplanes but they had no pilots. Their engines would cut out and then they would start falling to the ground and everyone would stop and look just waiting for the explosion once it had hit the ground.
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