大象传媒

Apart from a very brief spell of evacuation to Dorking, my brother and I attended the local school during the war even when there were daytime raids.
One of our biggest adventures was when a "doodlebug" , or flying bomb, flew noisily over our heads as we were returning home together in 1944 when I was seven and my brother, Eric, was about eleven. We were nervous but curious as the drone grew louder but our feelings changed to terror when, on reaching a great crescendo of sound, the machine's engine cut out. After a few seconds of eerie silence we hear it whistling towards the ground - straight towards us it seemed! With great presence of mind and a maturity beyond his years, Eric pulled me into the bushes of the nearby churchyard and shouted:" Lie down, keep your stomach off the ground and cover your head with your coat." Convinced that I was about to die I nevertheless tearfully did as I was ordered, just before the almighty explosion, which lifted us off the ground. There followed another order from big brother "Run as fast as you can!" I needed no prompting to career in panic, heart thudding, towards home, through a choking dust that reduced visibility to the equivalent of a pea-souper fog. The bomb had landed in our road, demolishing the dairy, my Auntie Lill's and my grandmother's houses. My Nan, who used to shelter under the stairs, suffered a bump on the head. My aunt was out at work and her dog was found running about the road in an understandably confused and frightened state. Mum must have been delighted to see us arrive home safely that day!
I learned recently of another side to the same story from my Aunt Marian, then an auxiliary fire fighter. She was on her way home where she lived with her mother and two of her sisters. She had come from Dulwich hospital. A bomb had landed on the fire station, wrecking it, but Auntie was saved by sheltering under a steel joist in the building. She was taken to the hospital to have a head injury dressed. As she walked up the hill towards her street she heard the flying bomb approaching.When the noise grew deafeningly loud, she heard the machine cut out and the thundering crash seconds later. After the explosion, she ran to her home to see smoke and dust pouring from the debris where the houses had stood. On reaching the scene of devastation she was shocked to see the body of a woman in an apron lying in the road - for a moment she thought it was her mother. She then discovered that her Mum had been found, blown into the back garden and virtually unhurt. An ambulance arrived and Auntie was bundled in with her mother as the ambulance crew mistook her for another casualty with her bandaged head and, in no time, she found herself back at the hospital she had just left! My grandmother was kept in overnight but Auntie was dismised to repeat the journed home again, this time carrying her mother's clothes, which gave the family a shock as they thought it meant that their mother had died. Of course, home now meant a pile of rubble and she and her family were faced with the problem of where to live until they could be re-housed. Auntie stayed at another fire station, grandmother and two of my other aunts stayed with us but I have no idea where as we only had a three-bedroomed house for our family of five. It is rumoured that two of the aunts slept on top of the Morrison shelter in the dining room!
The war, with its attendant air raids, blackouts and hardships seemed a normal part of our short lives, so we did not experience the same exhilaration and joy that the adults did when peace was finally declared, However, we did enjoy the street parties - jelly, cake, red white and blue ribbons in the girls' hair, paper hats for the boys - and the happy relaxed moods of the hitherto anxious and stressed parents.

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