大象传媒

I was seven years old. The air raid siren
sounded about eight pm as it usually did and my mother,younger brother,grandmother and grandfather all trouped out to our concrete air raid shelter in the garden. My father was away in the R.A.F.

All was quiet for a while and then we heard the sound of the enemy bombers in the distance. The sound grew louder and as it did the anti-aircraft guns started to fire.
They sounded very close as they were mobile and moved around to get the best advantage
for firing at the planes.The gunfire grew louder and louder and then the bombs started to drop and explode all around us. The air raid shelter shook and then rocked from side to side but managed to stay intact. The crashing noise from the bombs and gunfire was deafening and went on for what seemed hours.Eventually the noise subsided and we heaved a sigh of relief only to find that after a short lull the next wave of bombers arrived and everything repeated itself again. This happened three or four times until there was a longer lull. My grandfather, who was an air raid warden, then said he was going out to have a look around even though the shrapnel was still falling. When he came back he said a house in our road had received a direct hit and was demolished.

At last the all clear sounded and we thankfully emerged from the shelter in the small hours of the morning into a warm summer starlit night. The contrast between this beautiful night and the wail of the all clears going down in the distance was quite eerie.

My father took a 48 hour leave the next day
and took us all to the country where we were safe until the battle of Britain was over. We then returned to our house which was very damaged, all windows were blown out and the ceilings were hanging down but we were happy to be home again. All was fairly quiet until the flying bombs started - but that is another story.

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