大象传媒

I was three when the war began and I lived with my grandparents, my widowed mother and my younger brother in a house in Lenton, Nottingham.

When the air-raid sirens sounded, my brother and I would(on most occasions) be woken up and carried downstairs into the cellar below the house. The people in the adjoining house would also be in their cellar and both sets of grown-ups would chat during the air-raid through a hole which had been knocked through the adjoining wall.

I don't know what year my story took place, only that it would be sometime between 1941 and the end of the war.

We were down in the cellar one night, sheltering from the raid when we heard a 'plane which sounded very close. All of a sudden we heard a bomb coming down as it whistled through the air and grandad ("Pop", we called him)shouted, "DUCK!" and we (at No.1) and they (at No.3) all ducked down on the cellar floor.

There was a loud bang as the bomb hit the ground but, the next day, we were pleased to see that it had only left a crater in the middle of Lenton Boulevard (quite close to our school)and had caused no casualties.

However, it was a standing joke in our family for years after that "Pop" had shouted "Duck!" as the bomb came down.

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