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This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Pat Mantell from Sidley Online Centre and has been added to the website on behalf of Eileen Crowhurst with her permission and they fully understand the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was 鈥渨alking out鈥� as they said in those days, with a postman Len Crowhurst; he was waiting to be called up for the Air Force. The bombing got very bad in Bexhill so the authorities decided to evacuate people, we could go to Letchworth or Wiltshire, we went to Wiltshire. It was pretty awful; people had to take you in if they had a spare room even if they didn鈥檛 want you. We had a pretty miserable time. While I was down there I had a message from my uncle who was doing A.R.P. work, to tell me there had been a direct hit on the Metropole Hotel beside the De La Warr pavilion in Bexhill. He said he pulled this man out of the rubble, he did not recognise him at first as he was covered in shrapnel wounds, but it was my boy friend Len who had been delivering mail at the time. The Metropole was flattened and the staircase prevented the rubble landing on Len otherwise he would have been killed. He was taken to Horsham Military Hospital where he stayed for 3 months and then to Bexhill Hospital for another 3 months, with bad nerves and wounds. After getting reasonably better he went back to work at the Post Office.

I joined the Fire Service when I returned to Bexhill and had some bad experiences there; we used to do relief duty at Eastbourne. I remember coming back to Hollington (where I was stationed) in 1941. That same day the Fire Station in Eastbourne had a direct hit and I lost 7 of my friends, they were all killed there. It was sheer luck that I had to return; otherwise I would have been killed as well. We were all switchboard operators and it was only 1 hour after I had left that it happened.

Len and I got married in 1943 but he never really recovered and could not go into the Air force. When he died he still had lots of shrapnel in his body.

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