大象传媒

Marjorie Macertich A memory from November 1940

When war started in September 1939 I was seventeen years old. For the first year everything was fairly quiet as regards air raids but by November 1940 most of the big cities were getting heavy bombing raids. I lived in Birmingham with my parents, my father was an air raid warden for his firm and each time the factory got a direct hit we were always relieved when he returned home safely.
The one memory I will always remember was in November 1940. My mother and I had taken to sleeping under the stairs, which was considered a safe area. The sirens had gone off quite early at about 6:30pm. The noise from the heavy gunfire was deafening and together with that sinister sound from the German aircraft engines, which was quite different to the British, it had an intermittent hum. This went on for many hours, so we didn鈥檛 sleep. Around midnight we suddenly heard shrill whistles and voices telling us to quickly vacate the house as an unexploded land mine had landed nearby. We quickly put on warm clothes, picked up our small bag of valuables and followed our neighbours to the nearest air raid shelter. It was packed but we managed to find a bench to sit on and spent the remainder of the night there. My father found us the next morning and then we had to decide what to do. My mother went to stay with a cousin and my father and I stayed with work colleagues. But before doing anything, we got permission to collect the dog from the house. This was no problem, my father opened the door, gave one whistle and out he shot. We had to leave him as no animals were allowed in the air raid shelters. We joined the many hundreds of people walking into the city, a distance of four to five miles. There was so much broken glass around, I had to carry the dog and he was no lightweight!
It was two days before we received the news of the land mine. My father phoned to say it had exploded, but good news, no one was killed or injured. The army engineers had been dismantling it and had broken off for lunch when it suddenly exploded.
I was first back home, the front of the house was still standing, I was unable to open the door so I went round to the back. What a shock, no doors and no windows, just masses of glass, slates and bricks. I walked into the kitchen to a smell of dust, soot and damp. I then went into the hall, which was quite eerie, but with a bright shaft of light. I looked up and found I was looking up at the sky! So much rubble had fallen on the stairs that I had no steps to climb and had to scramble over plaster and bricks. My father appeared by this time and like all fathers took over proceedings.
We both worked flat out and brought bedding etc down into the dry. We used the dining room as a storage area and the sitting room was our only habitable space. The old wooden shutters came in handy as they did help to keep the cold out, but of course the daylight as well.
We delayed my mother鈥檚 return until we had some semblance of order. She greeted us so enthusiastically and said the important thing was we were all safe. I then proceeded to show her around, I thought she would be interested to know I had found her Christmas cake, which had been blasted to the bottom of the garden. It was covered in brick dust and mud. The cake tin was nearby smashed to pieces and my mother immediately burst into tears, although she had made light of loosing half her home.
I am pleased to relate, we found another house two months later with no bomb damage, and it was lovely. So ended the first twenty years of my life, but another was about to begin, but that is another story!

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.