大象传媒

I was born on january nineteen twenty nine ,and l was ten years old on september nineteen thirty nine ,we lived right next to the london docks ,my dad was a docker and my mother cleaned offices in the city of london and looked after nine children.
It was a sunny day that day when war broke out I was sitting on the doorstep didnt think much about war untill the next day when we went to school ,it was a bit strange we didnt go to our classrooms but we all had to go into the playground and all I can recall was the headmaster said to us all that all children who are to be evacuated stay in the school and the rest go home nothing else was said so l run home delighted there was no school .

Nothing much happend for a while except one night they sounded the air raid warning and we had to get our gas masks and with all of my family we went down our cellar with candles ,it wasnt a very nice cellar and allso we had to wear our gas masks ,that was the only time l wore my mask l think that was my most scaryest night of the war l hated spiders and it was a false alarm worse than when it was a proper alarm .

We had rationing and we had no sweets but we never had much before the war so it did not make much difference .

There still no school and there wasnt any for all of the war ,we did go to a school in christian street of off cable it was a jewish free school and our teacher was named Mr Soloman and l was a catholic ,it was only for a couple weeks before it got bombed .When we started at the school Mr Solomans said write your name on the top of your black boards with chalk we had no pencil or paper so l got my chalk and went to write my name when l realized l couldnt spell it,we were never taught anything and that was the end of my schooling.
After a while we all started to get organized with our shelters ,my sister worked for the BDV. a tabacco company in comercial street in stepney and we were allowed to use thier basment as a shelter,so when the blitz started we all used go on the trolley bus from dock street to the BDV shelter with our bedding ever night early befor they started bomeing ,it was good down our shelter we had loads of friends there and it allso had a small canteen we were lucky it was better than sleeping under the railway arches .Going home in the morning was hard if there been a bad raid in the night because of the debris from the bombing and most times the fire engines blocking the roads the buses didnt run so we had to walk home with our bedding and sometimes it would be raining.

We never went to the shelter every night sometimes the bombing eased off and we would all have partys and stay in our own houses because the shelters had a closeing time and if you arrived late you couldnt get in ,one night my family had a party and we all slept in the living room with our heads under the table ,this was what we were told that we would be safe if a bomb hit the house ,we were all asleep and then in the middle of the night there was this plopping noise l thought our window shutters had fallen off anyway we all ran outside to see what was happening and it was the first night of the fire of london ,my brother grabed the end of the hose and ran to where the fires where burning l ran to turn on the tap to the hose and then ran to my brother as l got there the water stopped ,what had happened was that my dad who came out of the house after me thought the tap was off so he turned the tap the other way shutting the water off,we couldnt do very much we tried and put some small fires out but there too many for us with our garden hose and the fire bombs were falling every where its a wonder we never got hit on the head by one so we had no choice but to make for a shelter ,not our shelter at the bdv to far and they shut the doors so we made our way to Wellclose square where there were shelters but we had no luck getting in one ,we then went along the Highway towards the Tower of london and the london dock and we managed to get in a shelter in Glasshouse street and had to sit on a bench all night till the raid finished in the morning ,during the night l was sitting with my head against the wall when the building shook and my head banged on the wall and this was followed by the smell of cordite from a bomb ,we were not allowed out the air raid wardens stopped us but when we came out of the shelter in the morning a whole block of Peabody buildings ,K,block had been blown up there was a lot of people killed including my cousin Mary Foley and her little son Danny Foley their names are on a plaque on the block across the street with all the other people that died that night.
that night was the start of the fire bombing that distroyed the london docks it blazed for three nights the bombs kept falling every night and they set light to our house we were in the shelter that night but my brother was there what happend we are not sure but the fire service put the fire in the roof outand they must have found my dads stash of booze and they drank it because my brother said that when he and the firemen went to help put out the fire in peak freans factory and to get the horses out of the fire some of the firemen were riding the horses like cowboys drunk ,the sad part is that some of the horses had bolted and ran into the river and were drownd .
Those few nights when the bombing was very heavy and there were a lot of fires were the worst we had suffered during the blitz ,for me it was a adventure most of the time ,we get times when things would happen out of the blue ,one day Aldgate was bombed during a nice aftnoon we heard that this stuker dive german bomber plane had got to centre london undected and dived onto Aldgate juction fireing its machine guns as it dived and dropping a bomb l think that the stuker bomber only carried one bomb ,it didnt do much damaged with the bomb but the maching gunning was terrible it caused havoc people had their heads shot off and we found some of the bullits where they hit a wall

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