大象传媒

I was 12 years old when war was declared.
I lived with my Dad, stepmother, brother and sister in Enfield, outside London in Middlesex. It was September and everyone knew that the Prime Minister was going to broadcast a message at 11 o'clock on that day and we would know if we were at war with Germany.

A neighbour came in with us; she wanted to be with somebody as her husband was working, when the news came that we were at war. Everybody was very nervous and sad.
After about 10 minutes we had another shock, the air-raid warning went.
It was a horrible wailing sound and our neighbour fainted. There was general panic.
Within 10 minutes the all clear sounded; it had been a false alarm.

Everybody was offered a do-it-yourself air-raid shelter to build in the garden so that we had somewhere to go during an air raid. It was called an Anderson shelter and made of very strong corrugated iron.
We all helped my Dad to dig a hole so that he could make a safe place for us to go if needed. We were very lucky we lived outside London; we did have air raids and a few bombs were dropped, but nothing like the centre of London.

There was a very funny thing that happened (although it was not funny at the time); it had been raining for many days and it was late evening when the air-raid warning went; off we trotted into the shelter to wait for the all clear to sound.
Because of all the rain, the little porch over the front entrance, which my Dad had made to keep some of the cold out, collapsed and we were trapped inside. Everybody had been told to always keep a spade in the shelter in case of an emergency and we had one, so we escaped without a problem.
After that night my Dad removed the shelter from the garden and put it in our front room as a sort of Morrison Shelter where it stayed till the end of the war.
My dad, stepmother and sister slept in it and I slept under the stairs. If there were an air-raid during the night, I would join them in the shelter.

We were very lucky. We did have a few Buzz Bombs (they were the ones that looked like a plane, but didn't have a pilot and when their droning stopped they just fell to the ground and exploded). We lost some windows and a few tiles off the roof, but we survived.
Many people lost everything they had, including their families.
Thank goodness my brother who was station abroad came home safely.

During the war I worked in an aircraft factory that built parts of the Lancaster Bomber, the sailplane and the middle section of the wing.
The parts were assembled on very large structures called gigs and I worked in the inspection department, when a part was completed I went with a senior inspector to check all the work had been done to the very high standard expected, as lives would have been at risk if there were any faults.
After a very thorough inspection, it was stamped with a number. If a fault were found later, it could be traced back by that number to the inspector responsible.

When the parts were completed they were taken to a secret destination where they were assembled with all the other sections of the plane and became the Lancaster Bomber. The men and women who worked in these factories didn't know where these planes were assembled for security reasons. When the war was over, the factory went back to pre-war days, making removal vans.

One of the saddest memories of the war for me was when I went to the East End of London to check on friends who lived there.
There had been many nights of bombing and there was no way of contacting them as not many people had telephones. Most telephone lines were down anyway.
When I arrived I was stunned at what I saw.
Streets had been flattened, there were the odd houses still standing, just two or maybe three, and as far as you could see just rubble, streets and streets of rubble. You could see people looking at where their houses used to be, trying desperately to save as many of their possessions as they could.
Our friends were safe but they had lost their home.
Most of the people went to emergency centres, some went to relatives while they waited to be re-housed.
That was when they started building pre-fabs (pre-fabricated houses); they were like bungalows but not made of brick. Our friends had one, they were very pleased with it and lived there for many years after the war.

Audrey Fahey

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