大象传媒

The earlier part of the story told of the devastation caused by a landmine being dropped near our house. The Partridge family - Frank, Conny, Joan (away in the WAAFs) and Jill - came to live with us. They stayed for many months before they found a place of their own. It was a very long time before their bombed house was rendered habitable. The whole site remained empty for years and a children's nursery was built on it.

One facet that I have not mentioned is spying. A teacher told me that someone was found sending signals from the roof of one of the large shops in Croydon and this may well have been true. Many years after the war a neighbour in Kenton where we now live told me that a local man who had fascist sympathies had his house painted in German colours -khaki and black - and my informnat thought later that this could have been a signal to the Germans if they had invaded. I recall that the Japanese used such method to identify sympathisers when they invaded Malaysia and Singapore and I am sure that such methods were common.

The next phase of the war was the most intensive and the most terrifying. It was the arrival of Hitler's V (for vengeance) weapons, the V1 and the V2.

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