大象传媒

THAT鈥橲 LIFE

I was 17 years old during 1941. My girlfriend and I and another couple sat on a seat in Eastville Park overlooking the pub. The other couple had gone on into the Park when the sirens went off. The guns on Purdown went off and shrapnel was pouring down. I told Betty that I should take her home.

The next day after work, I found that my friend Charlie, who had gone on through the Park, was in hospital with shock. I visited him in hospital. What had transpired was that; apparently, they had heard the whistle of a bomb coming down, and instead of lying flat on the ground, they had run for shelter. Charlie's girlfriend was running in front of him as they approached a shelter, when a bomb exploded near Eastville open-air baths. She was killed by a falling branch which had sheared off a tree and which speared right through her.

On another air raid incident I was stood by the front door of our house, where we lived near Greenbank cemetery. It was a moonlight night. I saw two Heinkels flying over very low and there was a whistle of a bomb. I dived back inside the house and the bomb landed at the bottom of the road in the cemetery.

Two days later when I walked through the cemetery on my way to work, the gateway was not there and several graves were blown out of the ground. One of which was the grave of my friend Charlie鈥檚 girlfriend.

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