大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's Was Website by Sue Sutton on behalf of Mrs P Arnold the author, and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understnads the site's terms and conditions.

I was 18 years old and worked at the South Suburban Co-Op Society in Acre Lane Brixton London SW2. It was a two storey departmental store, which had a furniture, hairdressing and shoe sections, also a ladies and gents department as well as grocery and butchery units. My job was manning the switchboard and counting and returning food coupons to the local town hall.

It was a Wednesday 26/27 June 1944 - about 1/2 hour to early closing. My office was glass partition on three sides and suddenly there was a sound of an aeroplane and then a terrific explosion. It was a doodle-bug (flying bomb) I was buried in glass, blood everywhere. One of the young men from the butchery department came and took me downstairs and laid me in the saw dust to await the ambulance. My lovely blue and white spotted dress was red by now and the ambulance men just cut through my dress and underclothes to view my injuries.

I was taken to Kings College Hospital at Denmark Hill, put on a trolley and the porter stopped to chat to someone and let go an-d my stretecher nearly slid off the trolley. I was too shocked to be able to speak. My biggest wound was my right arm which had 10 stitches, but I had cuts all over. I was lucky my eyes were not affected, as I was working on the telephone.

There was another girl hurt as a large tin of Spam came off the shelf and hit her head - it gave her diabetas. I spent two or three days in hospital and was looked after very well.

The bomb hit the cafe next to the Post Office and there were some fatalities - but I can't remember the details now. It was over 60 years ago, we were lucky to just get the blast.

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