大象传媒

My memories of WW2 are on the night of November 19th 20th 1940, round about 1900hrs.
The air-raid sirens sounded so my parents and I proceeded to our garden shelter, namely a brick and concrete one in which my father had installed a coal stove making it cosy and quite tolerable, on entering you turned left at 90o into the main area with two bunks, one upper and one lower. After a short time the frightening sound that has lived with me the rest of my life the whistling scream of descending bombs that we found out later were 500lbs.
My mother throws herself across me to try and save me for what she believed we had coming,the whistling increased in volume and then this dull thud,breathless we waited anxious moments for the explosion, nothing ,we stirred and let out a sigh of relief. My father decided to investigate where the bomb had dropped I followed him unaware of the danger at the time, we went through the rear garden gate into the driveway and there was the hole drilled by the bomb.As we stood looking a ARP Warden appeared shouting at us to get away and made us all go to a community shelter up the road which was next to my paternal grandparents in Spon Lane opposite the Secondary School, about ten yards from which a second unexploded bomb had ended up in the cellar of Dolly Hale鈥檚 terraced house.
I have always believed and said the good Lord put his hands on our shoulders that night and meant it was not our time, my father lived to 86yrs and my mother 93yrs I myself am now a young 69.
I am eternally grateful for that moment of intervention , of all the bombs dropped that night these two were the only ones that to my knowledge did not explode in our area. The exclusion zone for a 500lbs one is 1000yds.
A few streets away in Richards street South a parachute mine killed twenty eight people and demolished Kenrick Park keepers house,also Peacocks in the high street .
The BSA factory in Birmingham was hit killing 54 people after countless more bombings too many to count.
This one vivid memory of WW2 will always be with me.J.T.Hood.

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