大象传媒

At the outbreak of war I was four years old and living with my parent in a small semi- in Streatham, London.

To begin with we shared a brick shelter in a neighbours garden. It had a strong concrete roof and contained bunks along the wall for the five adults and three children who occupied it. I can remember being carried out to it in the night, wearing my siren-suit. It was very noisy during a raid because we had a anti-aircraft gun emplacement on the Common just a few yards away. Eventually the raids lasted all day as well. In October 1940, it was my mother's birthday, we heard the all-clear and went for a walk on the Common - it did not last long, the warning siren went off and we had to run back home.

During the Blitz my Great-grandmother and Grandparents who both lived in Clapham were bombed out and had to come and live with us so we no longer fit into the shelter in the garden. We now had a room in the house re-inforced which meant a thick brick wall outside the window, corrugated panels on the ceiling and strong wooden poles to hold it all up. There was a double bed raised up for the Grandparents and my parents slept under it. My aunt and I had collapsable camp beds and poor old Great-grandma sat up all night under the stairs. One other important piece of furniture was a piano, when the guns and bombs were at their loudest we would have a family sing-song. I particularly remember 'Deep in the heart of Texas' with plenty of loud clapping.

This re-inforced room served us well. The first damage was from a land-mine which landed on the Common opposite and removed all our tiles, front window and doors. Eventually a doodlebug landed in more or less the same place and destroyed most of the house leaving us cowering in our room, shaken but unhurt.

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