大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War web site by Karen Elmes at the Building Exploratory on behalf of Alfred Croucher and has been added to the site with his permission. He fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

During the war Ted lived in Blundell Street near Holloway. The houses in the street were old, and many of them were badly damaged during the Blitz, as were those in the surrounding streets. His own home suffered minor blast damage.

At the outbreak of war Ted was only five, and when he was evacuated, he started fretting, so he was returned home. Soon he was sent away again, this time to Wiltshire, where he spent the war living in different homes.

Ted remembers being in school in Wiltshire when a German pilot parachuted down and was captured by police in the school playground:

鈥淭he German came down in a parachute. You could not believe what you saw - he came down in a parachute, a pram, and on the pram was a fold up motorbike!鈥�

Ted came back to Holloway when he was 10, just before the war ended. One day he went out to fetch some milk from the dairy when a doodlebug came over. He was not aware of being frightened; maybe he was too young, or perhaps he had just got used to the doodlebugs falling. He knew that there was danger when the sirens went because everybody started running around looking for shelters, and that day someone he didn鈥檛 know pulled him into an air raid shelter. At that time adults used to look out for all children out on their own, whether they knew them or not. Even if the shelters saved lives, Ted felt it was always a relief to come out of them, especially if the sun was shining.

Ted felt sad to see the neighbourhood and familiar places damaged by the bombs after the war, but there were some good things to be got out of the destruction, too. On the corner of Caledonian Road and Copenhagen Street there was a large bomb damage site which had been levelled, and the children from the area made a speedway for them to ride their bikes on. The children had to make their own entertainment in those days, and laying out the speedway was a lot of fun.

This story was recorded by the Building Exploratory as part of a World War Two reminiscence project called Memory Blitz. To find out more please go to ^{About links}

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