大象传媒

We lived in the suburbs of London, not far from Harrow, near the school Churchill attended. I was 2 years old when the war started in 1939. I had an elder brother who was 3 years older than me. For the first few months to a year of the war we hadn't much of an idea what was happening. When the bombing increased around 1941-1942, my brother and I often used to look out of our bedroom window watching the searchlights looking for German planes. One night, away in the distance, there was a huge red glow, our Father told us that London was being heavily bombed, this was called the London Blitz. One afternoon after school we heard gunfire coming from the sky, so we raced upstairs to look out, we saw a Spitfire chasing a flying bomb trying to shoot it down into a nearby park. Apparently the pilot couldn't quite bring it down in the field and a house nearby was damaged. The pilot went round afterwards and apologised to the residents.
Many times we heard the wailing of the sirens to warn us of approaching bombing raids. My Mother, Father, Brother and myself scrambled into a cellar type cupboard under the stairs until we heard the all-clear siren. We spent many hours in that cellar, we used to play cards and board games. My brother and I even had chicken pox and measles down there.
We were very friendly with our next door neighbours, everybody was at that time.
Our cellar backed onto theirs, so my Father carefully knocked out some bricks between us. We could then talk to them and we all had some great sing-songs together while guns were thumping above.

My Father worked for Smiths Clocks, he was a tool maker and also a fire watcher for the firm. He helped make items for the automatic horizon for aircraft (these are still used today). One day my Father went to the paper shop on his bike during an air raid after a while he came back out of breath and pale faced, he fell in to the chair and said "A bloody flying bomb has been chasing me all along the road, I thought it had my number on it" we laughed, laughing helped a lot.
I can't remember having any sweets, my memories are mainly of corned beef and dried egg, which I hated.

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