大象传媒

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One of my first memories of the war was seeing the evacuees billited in Poynters Road. The children looked so lost and sad, some were crying and hoping they wouldn't be separated from their brothers and sisters. It seemed so cruel, the people in charge knocked on doors and asked those indside, "How many can you take?" I can see them in my mind now, a crocodile of boys and girls with their gas masks and labels pinned to their coats.

I went to Evelyn Road School which we shared with the pupils from Acton. We went to school in the mornings one week and afternoons the next. The children from Acton School did the same.

During the week leading up to D-Day a vast army of lorries, trucks, gun carriers and tanks were parked along both sides of the roads around the Poynter鈥檚 Road area in Dunstable. The soldiers were British, American and Canadian and they brought with them chocolate which they gave to the children; wonderful to an 11 year old girl. There was an air of expectancy and excitement everywhere, a feeling that something important was about to happen, though nobody knew exactly what. Then one morning, everyone got up to find all the vehicles had been driven quietly away in the middle of the night and the streets were empty. I believe that the men just camped out in their vehicles while they were there.

At the end of 1944 a flying bomb fell one night at the end of Browning Road, which is just within the Luton boundary. Nobody was hurt. My father an air raid warden, who was not on duty that night, got up to see what had happened. The bomb had fallen in a field and thinking that no damage had been done, went back to bed. A little later the chief warden of the ARP post knocked on our door and said, 鈥淏ill! I think you鈥檇 better get up.鈥� The back door of the house had been blown off its hinges, a window had shattered and the kitchen ceiling was down! Many of the houses in Poynter's Road were damaged also, like ours. (This incident was reported in the Gazette, though no place names were given. The report said that a hospital nearby had not been damaged 鈥� this was obviously the Luton and Dunstable).

My father worked for George Kent in Luton where they made steering gears for tanks. On the day when Commer Cars was bombed, there were early rumours that Kent鈥檚 had been hit, though this later proved to be untrue. I heard the rumour in school and was very distressed that I was not allowed to go home to be with my mother.

After the war a street party was held in Poynter's Road and the children ran races along the grass verges. A No.6 bus came along while the party was going on and had to manoeuvre around the tables.

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