大象传媒

on the 3rd of September 1939 i was 17 and living in Stoke Newington and i worked making bomb doors for the Halifax bombers (it was a piano factory before the war). there were about 500 workers, mainly girls and older men but some american servicemen would come over to work alongside us. there was an air raid and we had to go down to the shelter - the all clear came - the girls started coming up and my friend Dorothy and i were caught in between 2 iron doors and a land mine dropped outside and we were trapped between these doors for 20 minutes. eventually the men forced the doors open. where i lived, i was a fire watcher at the factory and a land mine landed at 7am and knocked a street of houses and St Fairths church and about 200 people got killed, many of the friends. the concrete landed on my bed and would have killed me had i not been working. Stoke Newington High Street had a line of shops behind which were flats - mostly jewish people - another land mine dropped on a block of flats and broke the mains gas and water - as i walked to work next morning they were bringing all the bodies out of the shelter. because we had an ARP shelter close by who lost their families and had to dig them out. death was really just part of life so you lived each day. the V1's were the most scary becase when the engine stopped - it dropped.

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