- Contributed by听
- 2nd Air Division Memorial Library
- People in story:听
- Peter Welsted
- Location of story:听
- Norwich
- Background to story:听
- Civilian
- Article ID:听
- A2625914
- Contributed on:听
- 12 May 2004
This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Jenny Christian of the 2nd Air Division Memorial Library on behalf of Peter Welsted and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.
On the first night of the Baedeker Raids (Monday 27th April 1942), my mother woke me in the night and said they were dropping flares over the city, and we should go down the air raid shelter. I went with my brother and mother into the back yard, where our shelter was (we lived at the top of Miller鈥檚 Lane). Before we went into the shelter, she checked to see that our elderly neighbours had gone into their shelter, which was in their front garden. The shelters used to alternate between back and front gardens. The next-door but-one family (also with a shelter in the back garden) invited us to join them in their shelter. When the bombing started, our family鈥檚 shelter got a direct hit. There was smoke and debris everywhere. The emergency door on the shelter we were in was blown off. A girl had her head cut by shrapnel. We managed to crawl out of the shelter through the smoke, fog and fumes and went to a street shelter on the other side of the road. The Air Raid warden found us and directed us to Sewell Park, which was a first aid centre over the road. We stayed there until daylight.
Then we went to survey the damage. My mother looked at the heap of debris that had been our home and said:
鈥淭o think I cleaned the windows yesterday!鈥
Unfortunately, our elderly neighbours had gone back to their house in the night and were both killed.
One thing that used to worry us when we were at school was not being able to contact our mother. There weren鈥檛 any phones, so you didn鈥檛 know how the rest of your family were if you couldn鈥檛 see them.
When the war ended, it ended. You didn鈥檛 talk about it any more 鈥 you looked to what was coming. It鈥檚 only recently people have started to look back.
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