大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Caroline Toms (CSV) from Camberley Library on July 7 and has been added to the website on behalf of Vaughan Jones with his permission and they fully understand the site's terms and conditions.

My father Thomas was in the auxiliary fire service, stationed at a small airfield called Hanworth Air Park. One particular night there were some incendiary bombs dropped and one caught a building alight. You can鈥檛 use water to put incendiaries out, you have to use sand, and so all the firemen on duty grabbed a bucket of sand and ran off across the field towards the burning building. He suddenly noticed the people in front were disappearing. Being at night, there were no lights, you could just see a silhouette, then suddenly it was gone! My father stopped, then approached more cautiously. He saw they had all fallen in a heap in a bomb crater.

We lived in Middlesex, near what is now Heathrow. I remember we had a bomb in the river, which covered all the houses with weeds and sticks: the explosion had blown the banks of the River Longford, about 100 yards from our house.

I was aged ten or eleven at the time and my brother, Roy, was aged 5. My brother was sleeping under the stairs, as it was supposed to be the safest place in the house. We had one of those Anderson shelters, the sort you had in the house, but Roy was sleeping under the stairs. The explosion dislodged a load of bricks, they fell down near him. Another foot or so nearer and they would have been on him.

Another time, a bomb landed in the main road, just around the corner on the A30. It ruptured a gas main and the flames were at least twice the height of an average house. It was at night, so with the blackout the glow was really bright. The fire was still going in the morning.

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