大象传媒

During the war there was a small village called Queensferry just outside Chester, it was a simple town with ordinary people living in it, going about their normal routine. In this town there was a little girl called Mair Popplewell. Mair was six years old with a few toys including a pram and a dolly. Mair was a nice girl with a nice family. Her father worked at the train station because he was too old to fight and because he worked in a reserve occupation. This meant that some men were not able to go to war if they worked in a coalmine, on a farm or railway station. The reason was that their jobs were too important to the war effort. Her mother didn鈥檛 work either for she was unwell and wasn鈥檛 able.
Mair Popplewell鈥檚 story

One night during the blackout, I was tucked up in bed asleep when suddenly the wailing of the air raid siren woke me. I shot up and ran to the down stairs pantry which had lots of tins and cans of food stacked on shelves. The pantry was under the stairs and was shaped like a wedge. I had to go in first because I was the smallest, then it was my mother then my father; my father went to check on the next-door neighbour. My father came back to the pantry but without my next-door neighbour. Just as my father was closing the door, a loud blast sounded across all of Queensferry as the shattering of the shrapnel scratched against the pantry door.
The siren stopped and we cautiously opened the pantry door to find all the shrapnel in the door, the sofa blown to shreds, the windows shattered and in the corner of the kitchen stood my undamaged pram and dolly. We went to check on our next-door neighbour and found him in the sewer where he went to open the door to his shed to put his bike away. The power of the explosion sent him and the door flying down into the sewer saving the R.A.F. airman鈥檚 life.

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