大象传媒

I was just a small lad of five years old and my father had gone off to war and I lived with my mother Mrs Freda Drew and my elder brother Bernard who was two years older than me. We lived over Lloyds Bank at the Elephant and Castle in south London. It was a very large flat above the bank and we had plenty of rooms. My mother now cleaned the branch below as dad was away.
When ever an air raid warning sounded we would go down in the basement and stand by the bank's safe. But one particular day when we were walking home from our grandmother's shop we were just outside the underground station when the warning sounded. So mother took us both down onto the platform where there were bunk beds all along the wall. I remember my grandfather was there and all night long we could hear the thuds and noise from up above. people coming down told us "Its pretty rough up there tonight"
Next morning we went back up and out onto the street. There was firemen's hose everywhere, wooden blocks from the roads as they were made of them in those days.(Us boys were pleased at the sight of so many as we would chop them up and sell them for firelighters) Some buildings that had suffered and then we got to the corner to cross over to the bank. I remember as we got there my mother starting to cry as across the road was just rubble.
The tall buildings, Express Tea rooms, Wholesale Trading and the Lloyds bank had gone. I could not believe where the tall buildings of that size could just go.
I now started to cry as all my toys had gone including my rocking horse. We then went down to my grandmothers shop and not long afterwards we were evacuated to Aylesbury.
When my brother and I arrived we were lined up with our names on shoe lables pinned to our coats as people walked up and down looking at us.
Then a woman asked "Are you two brothers?"
We told her Yes and then she led us over to a woman sitting at a table and said "I'll take these two"
She had one son about my age. Everything was so strange and every morning us boys were sent out to pick stinging nettles. Every lunch time our meal was potatoes, nettles (cooked) and gravy. After a month our mother came to see us and as it was a cold day told us to put our overcoats on. The woman told her that we did not have overcoats when we arrived. We most certainly did and they were new tweed ones. When we told our mother what we ate each and every day. she took us back to London that very night. The last time we got bombed was when we had the flying bombs. I now had a young brother David. One day my elder brother went to queue up at the butchers and I was in the basement of this small terraced house with my mother lighting the boiler when were heard the siren and all at once the sound of a flying bomb. The engine stopped and we waited to hear the bang as that was the normal thing to happen. This time when its engine stopped we heard a noise getting nearer and nearer. It was like swinging a bit of wood around on a string. The noise got so very loud and our front wall came crashing in upstairs as the bomb hit a factory down the road. We then both said 'David' at the same time and rushed back upstairs. David was crying, he was in his high chair, which was now lying covered in glass and rubble on the floor.
We had to break the highchair to get him free and other than dust and dirt did not have a scratch on him. My elder brother then returned and we all went to my grandmothers shop which was just ten minutes away and left David there, then we returned to salvage what we could.
Sadly, we were wasting our time. The whole house had been stripped. Looters had paid us a visit and not a single thing remained.
That to me is far worse than losing all by bombing.

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