大象传媒

My grandparents stayed up in London because my grandfather refused to leave his congregation and my grandmother refused to leave my grandfather.
They had stayed on in the huge family house in which we had all lived since the 1920s, firstly my aunt and her family; then my parents and myself. (I was 4 years old). We had all gone away to the South coast on holiday in August 1939 and we women and children were made to stay down in Bognor out of London.
All was quite well as far as air-raids were concerned, they were comparatively safe until 1944.
When the air-raids started my grandparents would sit and play chess until the all-clear sounded. As my grandmother was deaf she never heard the bombs dropping or the anti-aircraft guns so she was able to concentrate on the game.
On the night in question, my grandmother had taken up her position on the sofa and my grandfather on his favourite wooden armchair and they got involved in their chess game. Suddenly from out of the corner of my grandmother's eye she noticed the kitchen boiler moving across the room, just missing her husband.
She asked grandfather what was happening when the ceiling fell in and the wall came to bits and the lights went out.
My grandmother had always had the reputation of being very nervy but on that night she was extremely brave. My grandfather's ankle had been cut and broken and he couldn't move out of the rubble but my grandmother calmly picked up the keys, which were always safely on the table in case of emergency, climbed out off the rubble, flattened herself so that she could craw over the top of the bricks and stuff and squeeze along the passage to the front door. The rule was to always keep a piece of metal in your hand and to bang as much as possible so that the Civil Defence people could hear where you were. Although she was deaf my grandmother waited until she could feel the vibration of the Civil Defence knocking - they knew she was deaf - and before agreeing to crawl out of the hole made the rescuers go past her to get her husband.
After the event my grandfather could never stop talking of her bravery and unselfishness. I think a few of the adults in the family were extremely amazed at that constantly terrified, nervous woman being the cause of my grandfather's survival.

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