大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Mairi Campbell of the 大象传媒 on behalf of Gerald Sydney Parker and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

I was born in 1938 and my parents came from Birmingham, my father was in the RAF stationed in Cornwall then the RAF moved him to Northern Ireland.

My mother, my big brother and I went to stay with my Granny for about 4 weeks, while my father found somewhere for us to live. One day we were out playing in the back garden when what seemed like hundreds of German bombers came over, the sky seemed to be full of planes, my mother came out and dragged us inside and put us under the heavy kitchen table. I could hear the bombs exploding all around us, also some anti aircraft fire, this went on for probably half an hour.

After the bombong had stopped we went with my mother to see if my aunt Hilda was alright, she lived about a mile away.

We walked through the park and accross the road, the park had a bowling green, and one of the bombs had dropped on it and left a huge crater, we then went through to streets that had been badly hit, in fact it looked like a stick of bombs had hit the whole of one side of the street. There was fire engines and firemen digging people out of ruined houeses with many other houses on fire. There were fire hoses and rubble all accross the street, I remember having to lift my legs to step over them, I was only 5 or 6 at the time.

There were some people killed in those two streets, the BSA small arms factory was nearby so that was probably the target.

Aunt Hilda was ok.

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