大象传媒

April 1939 I moved with my parents, sister and brother from a council house, Abingdon Road to the house my father bought for 拢600, I was 13. I remember we had several weeks off school whilst they built brick air raid shelters in the playground at my senior school. I don鈥檛 ever remember any day time raids, but we did air raid practice and all had to line up and get into the shelters. I can still remember the wail of the sirens warning us of an impending air raid and I and my family very quickly ran across the lawn to the Anderson shelter, which was made of strong corrugated iron. Dad dug the hole and covered it with soil to camouflage it, he also made wooden bunks and mattresses made of Hessian sacks and filled straws. My dad worked at the G.E.C. Wilton and was a capstan tool setter so didn鈥檛 get called up but did do A.R.P. fire watch duty and kept a notebook of who he would be on duty with and the date and how鈥檚, also if it was a quiet night or one long busy putting out incendiary bombs with the sand, water and stirrup pump always at the ready.

I remember taking my knitting down and in the hurry dropped the wool all across the garden and wasn鈥檛 allowed to retrieve it till the all clear was given. I always quickly fell asleep in the shelters and guess it was the atmosphere only having candles and the walls used to get wet. I can remember the heavy drone of the German planes and as we were only about 2miles from the ICI factory where all the ammunitions were being made (and I was told stored) underground. One night we had just got out of a long stay in the shelter when a delayed action bomb went off in College Road (about 200 yards from us) and 4 houses were demolished completely and later rebuilt. In the haste to get to the safety of the shelter, as we didn鈥檛 know what was going on with the noise, my mom hurt her leg. She always grumbled about the entrance which was a bit awkward, but Dad thought it made it us safer. So the next day I had to stay with mom all day underground and only coming up to get some food for her and to go to the toilets, of course.

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Anastasia Travers a volunteer with WM CSV Actiondesk on behalf of Doris Luck and has been added to the site with his permission. Doris Luck fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

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