大象传媒

I lived in South London during the blitz. At the age of four I had been evacuated with my mother and brother, first to Folkestone, Kent which was promptly bombed, then to Bishop's Waltham near Southampton which also became a target. My parents decided we should return home and take our chances in a house in Lant Street, Southwark that my father had just bought.
I remember our family sheltering in 'The Deep', said to be the largest air raid shelter in London, which had an entrance in Borough High Street. A series of tunnels ran beneath the street with another entrance near Red Cross Way. At night I could hear the thud of bombs on the roof and people would say 'Don't worry, they are only incendiaries'. When we left the shelter we saw the smouldering remains of bombs some of which had set fire to the tar blocks that formed the road surface in Newcomen Street.
On one occasion my father, Jim McDonald, had remained in our house which we had occupied for only two weeks. When we returned from the shelter one of my brothers went ahead and came across my father wrestling with a man who was trying to make off with a mattress outside our bombed house. My father had been in the house when a bomb went through the roof and two floors, fortunately it did not explode until he had run from the house.
We were put into a rest centre at Laxton Street School. Later that day my father returned to the ruin and found people digging in the rubble for the chap they who knew lived there - he explained it was him. After a short while we moved into a flat in newly built Balin House in Long Lane that was surrounded by ruined buildings. The debris remained several years after the war ended.

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