大象传媒

Jack was living in London when war broke out. In 1940 he got married and was living in Harlesdon. The Saturday night after his wedding, in September 1940, the bombs fell "by the thousand." He remembers how very frightening it was and how the ground literally jumped up and down. Three weeks later his call-up papers arrived and he went off to enlist. He was "somewhere by the seaside" and was about to be issued with his kit when they sent him back to his firm. He was not allowed to go to war after all. His firm, Art Metal Construction Corporation (an American company) were making aircrage parts and he was required to be there. He recalls how hard they had to work all day every day and then how they used to have to run around at night after the air raids, desperately trying to help people and put out fires. Outside the Scrubs prison you signed up to do two or three nights a week. They were equipped with 'Z' guns. They used to aim them at the planes but never hit anything. They got used to the constant bombings. A V2 rocket was the nearest to hitting him - "it came down so fast, it blew all the windows out." He vividly remembers the ground "bounmcing" up and down and the incendiary bombs, how he used to chop down doors to put out fires.

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