大象传媒

I was born at Brentford End, Middlesex in August 1938, 100 yards from the Grand Union Canal warehouses which subsequently became a target for the German bombers during the Second World War. My Grandmother lived just up the road in a cottage part of Syon Park estate owned by His Grace The Duke of Northumberland,this cottage had a orchard of approx 3 acres containing apple, plum, and pear trees the fruit of which were picked by my Uncles and sold quite cheaply to the locals ,the children holding their shirts out to get them filled up with a pennyworth of windfalls,a luxury in the war.
At the outbreak of W.W.2 a surface air-raid shelter was constructed out of corrugated iron at the side of the orchard backing on to a 8 foot high brick wall over which was the fields belonging to the farm in Syon Park,from the garden gate of the cottage to the shelter was a cord going from one tree to the next so as the shelter could be found in the dark or the fog when the siren was sounded.
I remember one misty dark night being taken to the shelter by my mother and some of my family, we had not been in the shelter long when we could hear bombs exploding,the noise getting nearer then there was terrific explosion the shelter shook the blast blew our candles out covering us in dust and spiders, after a while the all clear was sounded so we made our way back to the cottage. When it finally got light in the morning it was found that a bomb had dropped into the middle of a massive dung heap that had been piled along the other side of the high wall, the top two layers of bricks from the wall had been blown off as the bomb exploded ,also quite a bit of dung spreading had been done.
Had the dung heap not been exactly in the right place the bomb would have blown the brick wall right through our shelter, probably wiping us all out . Talk about luck!

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