大象传媒

I was 2 years old when the war began, so my memories are a little vague about the early years of the war.

My mother reminded me about the following incident. One evening when my brother was at my Gran鈥檚 house, which was about seven minutes away, the sirens sounded and my mother put me in the pushchair and started running to go to my Gran鈥檚 house. She was about halfway there, when a German plane came overhead and started firing bullets. Fortunately the bullets hit the roof of the house that she was passing. She continued running until she reached Gran鈥檚 house, where we all went into the Morrison shelter.

Later in the war when I was at Central School in Exeter, I was told that if the sirens went, my brother was to collect me from class, and we were to run home as fast as possible. After a while the neighbours near the school suggested that we children could go into their houses for shelter rather than running home.

On the night of the blitz on Exeter, we were in the cupboard under the stairs of our home when a bomb dropped across the road. We later discovered that it had shattered all our windows and had blown the sideboard and other pieces of furniture across the room.

I remember that every evening when I went to bed I would always remind my mother to wake me up if the sirens went! When it was necessary to wake us she would go into my brother first and wake him and make sure he was out of bed, she then came in and got me ready. Unfortunately by the time she went back to get my brother, he had usually gone back to bed and was asleep again.

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