大象传媒

The air raid shelter in our house was the front basement room. I don't remember when they were erected but we had several reinforced concrete pillars in the room.

When an air raid warning went off my grandfather used to rush to the top of the basement steps and almost drag in any neighbour off the street.

I remember one lady he pulled in lived just up the road. It was a bad raid and we new a bomb had dropped quite close by. After the 'All Clear' siren we made our way to the top of the steps, we saw that the local church and the lady's house were in ruins.

All that the lady said was "That fg Hitler! I had just scrubbed all the bloody stairs down. I wouldn't have bothered if I had known he was going to bomb the blooming place!"

Our house backed on to the main line railway from Paddington to the West Country and I can remember my mother throwing me under the kitchen table when she heard a 'doodlebug' cut out, my head hit the leg of the table when Mum flew in behind me, the bomb struck a house on the otherside of the railway, we were covered in glass and the blackout curtain smacked out the gas mantle leaving us with very little light to see with. Years later Mum told me all I was concerned about was my banged head, being so small it hadn't registered that a bomb had probably killed people on the other side of the railway.

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