大象传媒

COLLABORATIVE ARTICLE
WW2 HUMOUR

We had moved fromthe Bunk to Handdover road,in Holloway,then a bit nearer to Highgate to a road called Rupert road.We were there that night,it was either early 1941 or 1940,my brother was in the army and he had come home on leave,I was only about 16 or 17,he had come home to see us.
We had an Irish girl lodging with us,she had been with us for about 3 years,she used to work with my sisters,they felt sorry for her because she got thrown out of her lodgings so they brought her home one night and we took her in.She wasn't a bad girl,she was real Irish,she was born in the south of Ireland(the south of Ireland wasn't at war then,they were not at all through the 2nd world war) anyway she lived with us,my sister,mum dad and me,we all lived together in Rupert road.
It was one of the worst nights we ever had in London,the Docks were all alight,my brother and I stayed at home with the Irish girl,while my Mum,Dad and sister went down the tube underground station because it was safer down there,my sister was very nervous with all the bombs going and the guns.
There was only me,my brother and this Irish girl left at home in the house.There was an air raid on,the warnings had gone and the guns had started banging away.Up on the corner of rupert road (we lived half way down the road)on the corner towards Holloway road,the main street up there was a pawn shop.
The Germans let loads of bombs off all around us,there was an oil bomb dropped down the bottom of our road and that set everywhere alight,it was all alight half way up to us.There was a high explosive bomb dropped behind our house,in front of us, in the back garden,it blew that house in front of us almost all the way down.Half of our house went with it too,the front door flew half way up our passageway,the dresser in doors crashed to the floor,breaking all the crockery,the table turned over too.
The pawn shop at the top of our road,the Germans dropped a molotog bread basket,it was a great big parachute we used to call it.it had a big basket on the bottom of it and was full of incendry bombs.It hit the roof of the pawn shop and splattered all the way down the road,all the road was alight,all the houses including ours.
My brother and I were in the kitchen trying to sort the dresser out,the irish girl(she used to chain smoke,we couldn't get cigarettes in the war time,God knows where she got hers from)She would sit there with a big packet,now and again she would give us one but not very often,she also used to be a right reader,if she got a book she would never put it down,she read the book from start to finish,until she had read the last word in the book.

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