大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Kathleen Lockett from Crawley Library and has been added to the website on behalf of Mrs Glad Jewell with her permission and she fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

We lived in Green Lane in Morden, Surrey, and I was about 11 when this story happened. Dad used to have a quart of beer every week. I was paid a penny a week (if I was lucky) to take the empty bottle back and get a new one filled. Walking back one day, there was an air raid, so the sirens were going off. It was a bright sunny day which meant I could see the planes fighting in the air. They were quite high, and as I looked up I could see these silver things falling down. I wondered what they were and stood still watching them. A street warden came up and grabbed me and took me into archways over the front doors of houses out of the way of the bombs which were the silver things I had seen. I was more scared of the man grabbing me than I was of the bombs, because I didn鈥檛 really know what they were. As I carried on after, turning into another street, the bombs that had been released had come down on the houses I walked past. It had only just happened and they were just debris. I carried on home with my Dad鈥檚 quart bottle, frightened I might get it broken. Again, a dogfight started and a lady from a house pulled me in to shelter. She gave me a glass of Salva Lataly to calm me down, because I was very scared and wanted to get home. After a while the planes moved away, so I made my way up the hill with Mum waiting at the front gate, worried out of her life, but just pleased to see me! Dad wasn鈥檛 worried about his beer as long as I was safe.

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