大象传媒

My father was a fireman in Hull in the blitz and the family lived in a small terrace house provided by the fire brigade in Worship Street. The air raid 'shelter' was the cellar in the fire station which was very close to the house and it was a ritual, almost nightly, to go there for protection. The fire engines went out to incidents on a regular basis through the night sometimes staying out all night. My sister can still recall the noise of the bells of the fire engines leaving, and my mum saying to her that her her daddy was on that fire engine. Every time now she hears a fire engine she gets very agitated, more than 60 years on.
We were subsequently evacuated but my father stayed in Hull. The fire station received a direct hit and my father was one of the few lucky ones who survived it. Strangely I was recently working with someone a long way from Hull whose mother worked in the canteen in the fire station and she was in there also when the fire station was bombed and she was also rescued - a small world!

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