大象传媒

This story has been entered by Shila Nadar of CSV/大象传媒 LONDON on behalf of Jean Denney and has been added to this site with her permission. The author fully understands and accepts the site's terms.

I can remember during the war, we had one of the outside toilets in the old house and I came out the toilet walking down towards the window and saw the window crack from top to bottom. The next thing, there was a blast, and it was doodlebug just up the road. As I rushed under the table the ceiling came down and the windows came in, and my feet were covered in glass and blood. But I got a good hiding from my mother because I'd left the lid off the butter dish and the glass had come in on the two ounces ration of butter for the week. Forget about my feet!
I can still remember my old identity number as well, and I remember we used to have to go to school with tin helmets because we were near an ack-ack gun and of course we had the gun fire.
And of course we all slept down in the shelters and sometimes they would be soaking wet, and at other times they would be dry. I remember there was a ritual though. We used to have to take down a black box with all the insurance policies, and a flask of water for the tea and coffee.
The one day we had a Messerschmidt shot down near us, and we had the wing come down in our garden. One of my friends and his brother were cutting bits off this Messerschmidt and selling them to local children for sixpence as momentoes. I didn't keep any myself - I didn't like the smell of it. It smelt terrible!
It's lots of little things like that that I remember but I think it would take a life time to tell all of them!

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