大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Janet Kowalska and has been added to the website on behalf of Edith Harmer with her permission. She fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

It was 1940 or 1941 and I was about 13 years old. My parents had moved to Woodchurch when I was give years old and when this incident took place I was still attending the village school.

One afternoon in September, I was walking through the village with a friend. She had her baby in a pram and her three year old daughter, Julie, was also with us. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, German planes appeared and strafed the village. This did happen from time to time and, as always, we dived for cover into the nearest ditch. Only a few seconds later it was all over and the planes had gone. When we climbed out of the ditch we discovered that Julie had landed on a blackthorn bush and had a large thorn lodged in her bottom. Her mother pulled it out and Julie, bless her, never even whimpered.

Later that day, around 6 o'clock, I was sent to the shop to get some potatoes. Mr Russell, the grocer, was sweeping up the broken glass which had been his shop window prior to the attack. At that moment, a big black car drew up across the road. From it emerged the King, the Queen and Winston Churchill. There was no escort - just them and their driver. The King and Mr Churchill went to speak to some soldiers who were standing nearby and the Queen came over and spoke to me. She asked if it had been a bad raid and if anyone was hurt. I managed to stutter out, "No, no one." "I'm so glad," she replied and returned to the car. As you can imagine, I was completely dumbfounded and couldn't quite take it in. I certainly didn't curtsey and it was all I could do to produce an answer to her question. The car drove off with Winston Churchill in the front seat with the driver, and the King and the Queen in the back. I suppose they must have just been in the locality for some other reason and decided to call in on Woodchurch when they heard about the attack.

I did remember to buy the potatoes but my mum didn't believe me when I told her I had spoken to the Queen!

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