大象传媒

I moved to Birmingham in 1944 just as the rockets, V1's and V2's had started. So, you know, after 44 my war was finished.
But I remember seeing the Battle of Britain, you know, from the garden; looking down over London, and fires, and so on. It was horrendous times, but as a child you didn't appreciate the dangers. I was an evacuee. My mother brought me home the day they had the worst raid on Birmingham and it was twelve or thirteen hours in the shelter. But my parents were both wardens. So they both went to the A.R.P. and they sat me in an air raid shelter with the people next door who I had never met. Put a blanket round me, wellingtons on and my feet on a box so the shelter had got water in about then.
So I spent the night like that, and my father fetched me out in the morning. It was ablaze all around me. You could read a paper in the dark; and that was an experience I've never forgotten. I don't really know what year that was. I couldn't put a year to it.
Well I was under eleven. I can never remember when they fetched me home, I just had to remember that was that raid.
You could hear the horses being shot, down from the railway station, which was about 500 yards away, if not a bit further; and they shot twelve horses that night, because they couldn't get them out because of the fire, and you could hear the Home Guard shooting them.
So those are, I think, about the worst memories that I could probably have.
Lots of laughable ones, where my grandparents were bombed out, and came up in their pyjamas and were just walking round. Which was.funny, and then it was just a case of carrying on, and growing up through the war.

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunter from Wyre Forest Volunteer Bureau from a recording made by Daphne Higgins and has been added to the site with her permission

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.