大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People,s web site by Wendy Young on behalf of Mrs L Hickman and has been added to the site with her permission she fully understands the site,s terms and conditions At the beginning of the war I was recruited into the A.R.P later to be known as the Civil Defence, which consisted of ambulances, attendants, heavy rescue equipment and men to man the equipment.
On Sunday September 3rd about 11am, Neville Chamberlin announced that we were at war with Germany. Shortly after this the sirens sounded.
I was told that I was an attendant and to get into my gear. The ambulance was a converted laundry van with a stretcher on either side. The driver was a woman. Off we went only to find there was nothing doing. I think that they were testing the sirens.
The days passed, it was a beautiful late summer and we spent our time sitting in deck chairs. But in 1940 all hell broke loose, and we had to use all our knowledge going to incidents.
I was living in North West London, on this particular night the bombing was very bad, our ambulance went out to an incident. Where there had been four streets of small houses, there was now devastation and a huge crater.
I must admit I was very shocked.
I felt very frightened when the doodlebugs started. They were worse than the bombs. One night when the sirens sounded my sister and I went down to the shelter, the all clear didn't sound until 11am in the morning, we were told that the doodlebugs had come. When there was a bad raid, my sister and I went into the anderson shelter in the garden. When we heard a bomb coming we thought we were finished and we clutched each other. Luckily it just missed us.

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