大象传媒

We were teenagers, and the three of us decided to go out for the night with 3 local girls to Tooting Beck Common. We found a bench opposite an anti aircraft site. We hadn鈥檛 been there long when there was a commotion on the site, whistles blowing people shouting and experience told us there was probably a raid coming. We decided to head home. It wasn鈥檛 long before the siren sounded and by this time we were near a shelter on edge of common. Planes arrived, guns went off, bombs started dropping and suddenly from the site which contained rockets, they screamed overhead. The noise was almost a replica of bombs coming down . This sound terrified some people in Bethnal Green so much that they fell down on the steps going in to the shelter and were crushed to death. 173 people died that night just getting down the steps to their shelter.
On another occasion 74 people were drowned in a shelter at Balham Station when a bomb fractured a water main. The crater in the road became so big that a double decker bus fell in to it. I didn鈥檛 hear about this until after the war. I had seen 2 fire engines outside Clapham South Station. I couldn鈥檛 see any smoke but after I heard about the water main deaths I realised that they must have been trying to pump water out of the station.

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