大象传媒

During WW2 I lived with my Father, Mother and Brother in a family house down Durham Street in east Hull. This particular night all seemed to be quiet and we went to bed hoping for a peaceful night. My parents slept in the front bedroom and my brother and I in the back bedroom.
During the early hours we were awakened by a droning aircraft noise and knew that it was a German aircraft by the engine noise, which we had come to recognise. We could see the searchlights sweeping across the sky through the closed curtains. Things started to happen quickly. I remember the sirens sounding and then the bombs started to drop. The first, the second, third and fourth. Each getting nearer and louder. Finally there was an almighty explosion and the entire window, glass, wooden surround and curtains came crashing down on to the bottom of our bed. We climbed out in our nigh clothes, and with our parents, made our way into the street shelter. When we got there we realised we had walked across shattered glass and had not even suffered the slightest cut!
When daylight broke we went back into the house to retrieve some clothes. On going into our bedroom we saw that above the bed head there were shards of glass, like so many diggers, embedded into the plaster wall. The house was a wreck with soot and plaster everywhere. In the small kitchen I could not figure out what a bowl of black marbles was doing there, and then I realised my mother had put a bowl of dried peas in to soak for dinner and they were covered in soot. My mother had a lucky escape. On hearing the aircraft she had just started to come out of the bedroom to have a look out of the small landing window at the top of the stairs and would have taken the full force of the blast if she had not moved. The bomb which was dropped and did the damage had fallen just over the other side of a large wooden fence which separated our home from Garden Village.

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