大象传媒

Towards the end of the war in 1944, pilotless flying bombs (V1s) were used to bomb London and the south east of England. Living in Harrow and going to school in Hampstead, we seldom saw them as we were hustled to some sort of cover whenever their distinctive roar was heard to wait for their engine to stop, then glide to the ground and explode without the warning air raid siren we got with a manned aircraft raid. The moments of silence between the roar suddenly stopping and the explosion were extremely frightening as you thought it would hit your house, followed by relief on hearing the explosion. It became a morbid curiosity to cycle to where one had landed and look at the rubble that had been buildings.

When summer school holiday came I was bundled off back to Reading and comparative safety but waiting for the train at Waterloo on a clear summer morning I had an unforgettable sight of a flying bomb with flames from the rocket engine streaming out of the back coming towards the station going right overhead, the engine stopping very soon after and I watched it glide to the destruction of some random target in north London. with a huge plume of dust and smoke.

The Southern Railway electric soon came in and I was off to comparative safety for the remainder of the summer in my aunt鈥檚 bungalow, 51 The Drive, Earley, Reading.

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