大象传媒

I grew up in southern Ireland and came to England at the end of 1940 to go to a new school. We bought all my new uniform and got all ready for starting in January 1941. We decided to have an evening at the cinema as a good way to end the holidays. Halfway through the film a bomb fell very close to the cinema and part of the ceiling fell down, the manager came out and said that they hoped to restart the film soon, but after waiting about thirty minutes we decided to leave. The car journey home that should have taken about 10 minutes took over an hour due to new bomb craters in the roads and the air raid was still 0n. When we eventually got home an incendiary bomb fell on the adjacent house. They had not obeyed the rule that said if you were away the bath must be left full of water so that fires could be put out. Our house was soon ablaze and with the help of passing sailors we were able to rescue some things, but we lost my brother's and my new school uniforms. Some friends kindly lent us their house on the sea front in Southsea where we saw out the war. The air raid on Portsmouth in January 1941 was one of the heaviest in the war, they were going for the naval dockyard. That was my introduction to England.

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