大象传媒

The following two recollections are from my aunty Maisie and uncle Ken:

One night which which I shall never forget is 16th April, 1941. Our family were, living at that time, in Wandsworth not far from the busy railway station,Clapham Junction. Our house was of a solidly built Victorian type, with a semi-basement and three floors above. We lived in the semi-basement and first floor. We had an Anderson shelter in the back garden, but for some reason, we did not go into it that night. The air-raid sirens sounded at about 9pm., and it was quiet for a while until the gunfire started.
At 10.30 our Dad put on his tin helmet and went up the back steps to look out. In a few minutes he came rushing back and called out, 鈥淨uick, take shelter, there's a large box floating down on a parachute.鈥� We all dived under the kitchen table, and there was a terrible crash and the sound of breaking glass; it seemed as though the whole house shook. We stayed under the table until daybreak. When it was daylight we looked at one another and our faces were covered in soot from the chimney. We went into the road. There was glass everywhere and huge mounds of rubble Our local Public Library was completely demolished; 8 people had been killed and 25 injured. Some of our windows and doors had gone and the upstairs ceilings were down. Dad had put wooden shutters at the windows in the living room which saved us from being showered in glass.
We dreaded the next night coming, but were thankful thar we were still alive. Another land mine had fallen on a block of council flats half a mile away and there were numerous ordinary bombs, one landing in St. Annes churchyard nearby.
The next morning I went to work, and found that the office had received a direct hit from a land-mine. This was in Page Street, Westminster, near Lambeth Bridge. As the office was in ruins, we were sent home and I helped with clearing up at home.
Maisie Ellis

In July 1944 the flying bomb (buzz-bomb) raids were at their height. I was a schoolboy at the time and on this particular afternoon the sirens has sounded so I went with my mother and brother and into the Anderson shelter in the back garden of our house in Geraldine Road, Wandsworth. During the afternoon, unknown to us, a buzz-bomb had flown over, but far enough away not to be heard. When over Southfields, west of Wandsworth, the engine stopped, as they normally did, and the bomb turned through 180掳 and glided back, silently over Wandsworth. All we heard was a slight swishing sound and then a terrific explosion. We felt a rush of hot air on our faces, as though an oven door were being opened.
We rushed out to the road. the bomb had fallen in Rosehill Road which was almost opposite our house. The road was completely hidden by a huge cloud of black smoke which billowed out into our road. Outside the garden gate I found a piece of the bomb, about 2 feet long. It was still too ho to touch. I wanted to keep it as a souvenir, but Government propaganda had warned us to be careful of booby-trapped devices, so I left it.
We lost many of our windows, and one ceiling had. fallen down because of the blast. Some people had been killed and injured and later that day the road was crowded with fire engines, ambulances and heavy-rescue lorries. On the following day gangs of workmen came round and replaced our broken windows with thick black tarred paper at the bottom and a kind of translucent material at the top, which let only a little light into the rooms, making things seem very gloomy.
Kenneth Ellis

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