大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Pat Mantell from Sidley UK Online Centre and has been added to the website on behalf of David Mantell with his permission.

In 1940 I鈥檇 only just started at the local infant school in the suburbs of London and was having to come to terms with the ferocious approach of the head mistress and an even more maniacal class teacher who made the proverbial wicked witch seem like an angel.

War had been declared? I didn鈥檛 even know what that was all about but I did know very soon afterwards that my elder brother by 12 years had gone, never to return and not even out of his teens. Apparently the Lancaster bomber in which he had flown his first mission had gone down over the Ruhr in Germany with so many others.

I do remember that an all metal table was delivered to our house. It was called a Morrison shelter, named after the current War Minister I believe, and was designed for families to have some shelter when the sirens sounded announcing another air raid. It was very large and very strong. I had a dream one night soon after we鈥檇 managed to assemble it. I dreamt that the top of the table, not the legs onto which it was normally bolted, was standing upright and my mum and me were trying to stop it from falling. We didn鈥檛 succeed and the huge sheet of metal came crashing down onto the floor.

When I awoke the next morning I discovered that the pair of semi detached houses on the opposite side of the road had disappeared, demolished by a random bomb.

The mind really does interpret sensations in its own way, doesn鈥檛 it!

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