大象传媒

In 1943, after having been evacuated to the west country for three difficult years, my school returned to the east coast. Soon afterwards one bungalow was demolished in a daylight "tip and run" raid. There were no warning sirens.
Fortunately, we had gone for a walk up the road. We heard a series of explosions coming nearer, and one earsplitting one, not far away. Then the road was sprayed with machine gun bullets by German fighter bombers. We dived behind a wall, as we heard the bullets whine into the ground nearby. I looked up just in time to see the crosses underneath the wings of the aircraft. Being so low, I even had a glimpse of the pilot.
Our next door neighbour, who had been walking his dog further up the road, ran back screaming, "My wife, my wife!" We ran across to his bungalow, which was just a heap of debris, to hear calls from the family inside. They had jumped into their Morrison table shelter when they heard the explosions. We began to shift the rubble and through a small hole, I was handed out a six month old baby, unharmed except for a scratch on her face. Her mother and grandmother were taken to hospital, after we had given them cups of very sweet tea to help with the shock.

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