大象传媒

I was only four and a half years of age at the start of the war. We lived on a council estate in Hanwell, London W 7. My one vivid memory was when an air raid was going. We would all go and stand in the coal cellar for as long as it was happening. Obviously the coal had been cleared out into the garden, and the cellar had been clean and painted white. It was such a small space, really only a cupboard.

There were grandparents, my mother, and brothers who were just twelve and nine. Night after night, we would stand in this cellar for however long the raid lasted. I have often thought of this over the years and couldn鈥檛 work out how it was thought to be safe. It obviously was though, because on one occasion when the bombing was especially heavy we had a bomb dropped in our front garden, followed minutes later with a bomb dropped in the back garden, yet the house and cellar was safe. The A.R.P men alerted us to these bombs. Who were always in the streets looking out for danger all the time. At the time we had the two bombs in our garden, so at the end of the street a house had a direct hit, and a young child was killed lying in bed between her mother and father. She was only seven years old. Her parents were untouched.

There were lots of other bombed out houses on our estate, much of our childhood was spent playing in them.

Another memory is of the schooling in the shelter. As soon as the siren started, you were marched down the shelter with your books and pens and pencils. When the teacher was trying to give you lessons, it wasn鈥檛 always easy to hear or take it in, because your class took so much space, then there was the next class, and so on all down the shelter; and there was not only your teacher talking to you, you could also hear the other teachers voices as well.

When the war was drawing to a close, I think the night the peace was declared, I was asleep in bed, My mother woke me up, and on a green very near my house a big party was going. With singing, dancing and bonfires. Everyone was celebrating.

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