大象传媒

As told by Donald Wharf

Obviously, life was an on-going nightmare for parents and adults in general but, strangely enough, it was different for children - that is, for those who were my age. Once we had weathered the first major raids, we were having the time of our lives! Even the shrapnel was easier to find as output exceeded demand - though, what we were secretly hoping to find, wasn't so much bits of shrapnel as one of the big, unexploded bombs that sometimes stayed buried for days. Luckily, thanks to the A.R.P. and the army, we didn't get near one. Most of us still thought of war as a game that was now being played on our doorsteps: not, perhaps, 'played' in the ordinary sense but this game was more an adventure.

Reality hit me at last, very hard: my 'adventure' was finally over. Following one of the noisiest nights that most of us, then, could remember, school didn't actually hold much appeal, but still, I decided to go. Ginger, I reasoned, was bound to be there and so were the rest of my friends. Probably quite a bit later than usual, I ran off up Central Park Road, still glancing down every two or three seconds to look out for even more shrapnel. Then, as I neared what I called 'Ginger's corner', I stopped in a wild sort of panic. Somehow, I felt I was totally lost - the landscape had changed overnight. This couldn't be so, I started to think - then I realised the corner had gone, and with it the red brick Victorian house that, up until then, had been Ginger's. Smouldering roof beams and great lumps of wall were covering the road and the pavement, and, I imagined, the red garden gate where Ginger was usually waiting. Questions were starting to race through my mind such as, 'Was he still there in the shelter, possibly trapped with the rest of his family?' Or, 'Had they been taken away?' Even though quite a few wardens were there, crawling about in the debris, I felt far too frightened and upset to ask - though they wouldn't have answered me anyway. Oddly enough, it was all very quiet; the firemen, by then, had all gone and only a few very shocked looking neighbours were left by the roadside still watching. That, in the end, made it feel even worse, so I turned round in total despair and ran, I think, faster than ever before, back home where I burst into tears.

My mother was naturally shocked by the news and appalled that I'd been there and seen it, but then she assured me that many a family had come through a similar ordeal, simply by using their Anderson shelter, and Ginger's, she said, always did. That gave me hope which was all she could do - but I never saw Ginger again.

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