大象传媒

This is to confirm that Cathleen Martin has agreed to tell us her story. Her story is now part of the archive. Cathleen Martin fully understands the procedures.

I was born 24th of January 1915 in London. It was about 1944-45 and I was in Kentish Town. My husband was serving in India and I was living with my baby daughter. On that day in the market, it was very big and sold everything. All the stoles were out, there were quite a lot of food considering the situation with the war. Suddenly we heard the bomb coming, it was a terrific noise, it blew all the windows out.

When I saw the bomb I ran and hid with my daughter under the stole and we repaired ourselves from all the glass and fire. I was screaming and I was trying to protect my daughter. We stayed there for about 20 minutes until somebody told us that it was over. The German planes used to drop the bombs there at any time of the day or night because they thought that it was a good target. We were very lucky to escape. It was frightening.

When I was living there, I saw doodlebugs and all the planes coming in the sky. When we saw our planes, we used to forget about the bombs and danger and we went on the streets to cheer them.

My husband stayed in India for a couple of years, he was a doctor in the fields picking up the dead bodies and invalids. When he come home we looked out of the windows for him. When we saw him my little girl said: 鈥淲ho is he?鈥� and I said: 鈥淭hat鈥檚 your father鈥�, and she said: 鈥淣o he鈥檚 not!鈥�. She wouldn鈥檛 believe me as she hadn鈥檛 seen him for so long!

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