大象传媒

This story was told to me recently by my father. He is now 95 years old.

In 1940 he was living in London with his wife, my mother, and baby daughter(me). We lived in Lower Sydenham, not far from Crystal Palace, and every morning he walked the whole distance to his job as an engineer at the cold stores in Cannon street. There were few, if any, buses running at that time. One morning he saw a bus that had been blown into a building. It was sticking out of a first floor window with its front wheels hanging over the edge.

His firewatch area covered Dowgate Hill, Ludgate, St.Pauls, and Cannon St. In 1940 the bombing continued for ninety days and nights. The German planes would fly low, just skimming gardens and roof tops, and the air was permanently filled with the smell of the explosive used in the bombs. In some places, huge barage balloons prevented this low flying, but these had to be secured to lorries so that they could be moved around. The German airmen didn't know where they would pop up next.

One night during his firewatch he came across the bodies of a young policeman in uniform together with that of a young woman. He later learned that they were newlyweds and the young wife was too terrified to be left alone at night whilst her husband did his patrol, so she accompanied him. They'd been killed by the blast from a bomb dropped at the other end of the street. In some streets the houses all looked OK until you pushed open a door to find nothing behind the front elevation.

My father's own young wife, my mum, was also terrified, and spent every one of the ninety nights in the Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden, together with some of the neighbours. Dad hated the shelter and stubbornly slept each night in the house, sometimes keeping me, the baby, with him to give Mum a break. One night he had to go out unexpectedly to do an extra firewatch. On his return he looked into the shelter to check that all was well. Mum said "Where's the baby?" Dad said "I thought she was with you!" Aghast, he raced back to the house to find his baby girl fast asleep, having been alone all through the night raid. I survived - I'm now sixty five.

It was raining bombs in those days - day after day, non stop. One night, as Dad trudged down Dowgate Hill towards the river, he poked his head into an old warehouse. It was full of dead bodies, including, Dad thinks, those of a hundred or more Australian soldiers who had been sheltering in Mansion House underground station. In his mind, he still hears the call to "bring out your dead".

One night a young German was shot down close to where we lived. He was barely more than a teenager and kept calling "mutti, mutti" (mum, mum). Some local women took him in and gave him hot tea before handing him over to the authorities, but some of Dad's fellow firewatchers weren't too chuffed!

After ninety days the all-clear sirens suddenly went off. There must have been five or six thousand Londoners dead. The river Thames was completely closed to shipping as it had been heavily mined by the Germans. London had been blown to pieces. As you looked along the river, only the cold stores seemed to be left standing. Dad has often wondered whether that was the result of a skilful plan on the part of the Germans to ensure future food supplies,if the invasion had been successful.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.