大象传媒

I was just over a year old when the Second World War (WW2) began so I don't remember that moment at all!!!

What I do have a faint memory of is "the Blitz". This was what we called the bomber attacks nearly every night on our cities, especially London, by the German Air force, The Luftwaffe. The Blitz lasted from 7th September 1940 to May 1941 - eight months in all.

The bombers were trying to drop their bombs on London; They had to fly across Kent to get to London. The pilots and navigators of the bombers had nothing to tell them exactly where they were - no satellite navigation systems or anything like that. Because of this - remember, this was at night, in winter and very dark - they often dropped their bombs in the wrong place. That usually meant Kent!

I lived with my parents in Slade Green, between Crayford and Erith, right on the edge of London. There was a factory less than a mile from our house, which made shells, and bombs and we always thought that the bombers were trying to bomb that factory. Right next to the factory were some big guns, which tried to shoot down the bombers.

These were called anti-aircraft guns and I still remember the sound the guns made when they fired their shells at the bombers. During the Blitz, they used to go off every night, throughout the night. Boom boom they echoed. I used to go to sleep accompanied by that sound - a deadly orchestra.

Because there was a fear of the bombs falling on people's houses, every house had an air raid shelter in the garden. There was a small room (about two metres wide and three metres long) and covered above and on all sides with sheets of iron. The idea was that, unless a bomb dropped exactly on top of the shelter, anyone inside the shelter would be protected from any bombs dropping nearby.

When the air raid was expected, a siren was sounded; every village and town had sirens. The sound warning us of an air raid was a sort of howling noise which went up and down, much like a police cars siren today. When the raid was finished the siren sounded again; this was the "all clear" and was a simple howl that did not go up and down.

I remember once being carried out to the shelter by my mum one night with the guns banging away and lots of flashes in the sky. I must have been just over two at the time, because I was wrapped in a baby's shawl.

We used to spend the whole night in the shelter if the raids were really bad. We once spent every night for six weeks in the shelter. "We" meant my mum and dad, my older sister and me. I found it all very cosy and I actually liked it. Dad had built our shelter very well. Some shelters used to fill up with water because they had not been carefully built.

The air-raid shelters were also called "dug-outs2 - because the holes of the shelters were "dug-out" of the garden. When the siren sounded to warn us of an air raid, I apparently said, "Better go down the dug-out. I knew that it would be safe.

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