大象传媒

When we went to Mitcham in Surrey, we had the doodlebugs, and they where the only thing that terrified me. They would come tootling along, then all of a sudden they would stop! They had moved a lot of the girls and men down the coast, to shoot the doodlebugs down because our guns at Mitcham could not do it. The rest of us were left behind, and they put us in the gun pits, surrounded by sand bags with concrete in, to look after the machine guns. The girls were not allowed to fire the guns, I would loved to have done that, I was last to go down into the pit and we heard a doodlebug stop, I threw myself down onto the nearest bed and put a pillow over my head. I remember thinking, now I will find out if there is a hereafter. Anyway it landed on the other side of the sandbags and blew the guns back as if they were bananas. It wrecked the camp and killed one of the girls in the next bunker and I walked away. If I had not put the pillow over my head I think I would have been killed, it stopped the shock wave and gave me some trapped air to breathe.
They sent us on leave and I stood on Paddington station under all that glass and the sirens went off, the doodlebugs came, everyone fled, and I moved up the queue thinking "I am not going to run, I am going to get on that train and get the hell out of here" so I was the first on the train. Those doodlebugs were scary. Even today I jump,when I hear a noisy motorbike because that is what they sounded like. About a fortnight after this incident I was back at camp and another one came over. It cut out, there were three of us in the room getting ready to go to out and we all looked at each other not really knowing what to do. All we could think of was to hide under the beds, which were still there, but with no mattresses but at least there were the wire springs. Then we heard the doodlebug start up again and continue on its way. They used to do that, stop and start to frighten the life out of you. They did some damage at Mitcham, they really did.

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