´óÏó´«Ã½

The day war broke out — Sunday 3rd September 1939 — was a day I will never forget. I was nearly 13 years old and that weekend we went to our bungalow in the North East countryside. Just after 11 am there was about 12 of us — friends and relatives — listening to Neville Chamberlain’s broadcast telling the nation that the country was at war with Germany. My mother broke down and wept bitterly as she realised how serious the outlook was as my father had fought in France and Italy during the first world war. A few minutes later we heard the dismal wailing of an air-raid siren. Imagining an air-raid was imminent and eager to see something exciting, my cousin and I ran to a nearby clump of trees and climbed to the top of the tallest tree where we had a plank fastened between two forks which we used as a kind of den. The next half-hour or so we spent scanning the skies looking for, and hoping to see, German bombers — but our looking was in vain. We heard some time later that an unidentified aeroplane had been sighted near Dover and that sirens had been sounded all over the country. However real air-raids became a regular feature of our lives in a year or so.

Two raids in particular stand out clearly in my mind. One Tuesday evening in mid-September 1941 I was in the house of a friend of mine and we were playing with model aeroplanes — constructing models (not from kits mind you!) which was a popular hobby for young lads in those days. Suddenly we looked at each other in horror as we heard the scream of a bomb coming down. We both dived — Alan into an eight-inch space under the sideboard and myself into a similar space under a chest of drawers standing in an alcove. The bomb hit a church about 1km away from the railway line (perhaps a military target?) and exploded with a terrible bang. As the noise subsided the siren started to wail and we picked ourselves up and hurried in to the air-raid shelter in the back yard. Another bomb exploded about 150 m away damaging the roof of Alan’s house with flying debris. After the raid I returned home safely much to the relief of my mother.

Two nights later on the Thursday I was at home when we had another raid. Our house was directly opposite the old cemetery. A stick of six bombs fell into the cemetery — a seventh bomb would have hit our house directly and I would not have been able to write this tale. When I went upstairs after the raid I found, lying flat on my damaged bed a heavy tombstone that had come through the roof. Fortunately it did not have my name on it!

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