´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People’s War website by Annie Keane on behalf of Reggie Nipper and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Getting ready for work
It was about 1944, just after D-Day. I was about 12-13 years old and I was working as an errand boy for a greengrocers. One day about 5pm I put my boots on to go to work and I was just about to lace them up. All of a sudden I was on the floor and there was glass all around me. I heard the explosion afterwards. With my boots still undone I ran out of the house. Dad ran out of the door as well and we realised that my two sisters had just gone up the road.

A wall of dust
The bomb had landed on Gladstone Avenue, I’m sure it was a V2 because there was no warning. We were only 100 yards away from it, when I got outside the dust and debris was moving up the road like a solid wall. An Air Raid Warden ran past me, and asked me if I was alright.

My Dad found that our sisters were safe, one had gone to Woolworths and passed nearby to where the bomb went off. The other had gone to see her friend. The road was blocked off and my Mum couldn’t get home, when she saw the damage she fainted and needed some smelling salts. She was on the way back from working in a restaurant.

A lot of the people on one side of the road had been protected by the brick shelters that had been built in the middle of the street. As kids we used to pop in to the shelters and have a crafty cigarette. They weren’t very nice in there. I remember that we always used to carry a torch — they took a number 9 battery.

A playground
Once the site had been cleared up, for us kids it was a big playground really, we didn’t understand. I knew we were at war but I didn’t feel any fear. There used to be a Prisoner of War camp near South Mimms, we used to cycle by and see them in the street. We used to shout at them, just the Italian words that we knew, such as ‘spaghetti!’

It wasn’t until after the war that it really sunk it in when I saw the newsreels and realised what the situation was and what had happened in the Holocaust.

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