大象传媒

This story was submitted to the site by Belinda - working with CSV Cornwall, on behalf of Brian - the author - with his permission. Brian fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was about 5 and we lived in Ashford in what was then Middlesex. I recall waking up on the floor in the morning having been knocked out of bed by a bomb blast. One time all the windows and doors went, they were blown out.
One day I was going to school, it would have been about 1943 or 1944, over the railway bridge - picking up shrapnel as we went as kids did - it was everywhere. When I got into the village there was a big space where six houses stood, next door to a shopping parade - near Woolworths. You could see the tail fin of a V2 rocket sticking out of the ground, a big hole amid all the rubble. One thing that always stuck in my mind was that there was a dead cat, killed in the blast, under a hedge. No one ever cleared it up - it just stayed there.

As child, I was taken by my father to a demonstration in Staines. The name of the building was Crimbles Garage. They threw incendary bombs onto the concrete, and they showed you how to pick them up and put them into a bucket of water to put them out. I was five at the time.

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