大象传媒

This story was entered onto the People's War website by Rod Sutton on behalf of Wilfrid Jolley, the author, who fully understands and accepts the sites terms and conditions.

I can remember as a young boy with my elder brothers and sister being rushed into a makeshift 鈥淢orrison鈥� type steel shelter cage onto mattresses in our front room in Enfield. I remember the warning sirens to warn us of impending attack from bombs and the V1/V2s as our house was not too far away from the Royal Small Arms Factory where of course the Lee Enfield 303 rifle was manufactured. A very valuable target for the Germans.

On many occasions after the attacks and during daylight hours I would go along with my older brothers and endeavour to collect shrapnel. This we collected in a large hinged tin biscuit box and I can remember this being so heavy.

Much of the metal from memory was like non-ferrous metal, cast bronze or the like and all pieces were small about four inches long by one inch wide.

I can also remember what a special day it was for us as a family when we would receive food parcels from Australia; dried egg, fruit cake etc. Later in life during my travels in the Merchant Navy I contacted the family in Geelong, Australia to say 鈥渢hank you鈥� and spent a very memorable day with them.

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