大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Melanie Bird from CSV/大象传媒 London at the Living Museum on behalf of Pat Bullock and has been added to teh site with her permission. Pat Bullock fully understandsthe site's terms and conditions".

I (Pat Bullock)was 6 years old when the war broke out. I remember being evacuated with my brother (David Bullock), and my mum (Rose), we were fortunate my mum was with us all the time. My dad was in the army.

We were away about four months in the early part of the war, which was called the 鈥榩honey war鈥� because nothing was happening. So we all came back and the Blitz started. We went all through the Blitz during which time the following incident happened.

We went down the shelter on the worse night of the Blitz. When we came up from the shelter we were met by the A.R.P. Warden who said to my mother 鈥淵ou have never seen anything like this鈥�. The sky was Scarlett. We lived in Blackfriars road at the time and could see St Paul鈥檚 at the end of our road. It was a sight I shall never forget. The sky was a brilliant red and St Paul鈥檚 silhouetted by the smoke and flames, was an unforgettable sight.

During the heavy raid that night, there had been incendiary bombs dropped causing widespread fires. Firemen were trying to douse the fires when the Germans dropped a land mine killing 40 firemen.

I was a bit of a roamer, I made my way to where the land mine had been dropped causing all this havoc and when I got to the scene it was roped off by A.R.P. Wardens. I was seeing pieces of hands, arms, legs, pieces of hosepipes all being gathered up and put into sacks and just stacked up against the wall.

Rita Collins, my cousin was a baby at the time. She had been taken into hospital that morning. Had she been at home she would have been killed as a large lump of concrete had fallen into her cot where she would have been laying. It would have been a double catastrophe as her mother had heard at the time that her father was missing presumed dead in Dunkirk.

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