大象传媒

Early in 1940 Myself(Brian) was 11 years old ,my brother Peter was 4 and as the government instructions at the time we were asleep under the stairs.
That evening we only had gas (no electric) in the house, Father (Walter) had no gas on either because he had no money for the meter,so mum and dad were sitting round the kitchen range using candles, mum said to dad it's cold tonight and pulled her chair closer to the fire.
At that instant she felt something pass/drop behind her which took the clothes she was wearing from her back,the ceiling collapsed dust everywhere covering mum from head to foot, mum and dad ran outside to the neighbour.
When the neighbour (Mrs Martin) opened the door she saw mother completley covered in white an thought she was seeing a ghost, collapsed into a faint.
On recovering from the shock she offered mum and dad a good old british cup of tea whilst drinking mum suddenly shot up and screamed GOOD GOD what about the boys.
On returning to the house they found the boys asleep under the stairs.

Now is the time to explain what had happened

At the time what was thought to be a bomb, later turned out to be a 4 inch naval shell prosumed fired from a gun positioned on a hill 4 miles away.
The shell came through the roof taking just one roofing slate with it making a perfect round hole in the bedroom ceiling hitting a door (but not knocking it off its hinges) to the ground floor where it destroyed internal walls.
My fathers great aunt aged 85 was asleep in the front downstairs room it through her and the bed straight through the sash window killing her instantly.
Ironically because she had felt un-safe sleeping upstairs this was her first and last night asleep downstairs!!

Next morning the bomb desposal squad arrived they had to dig aprox 6 feet under the ground to find the unexploded shell which as a boy i was allowed to sit and watch them do this.
On removing the shell they unscrewed the nose cone of the shell which i still own to this day.
It was always said to me that my mother was one of the first civillian war casualties in Middlesex.(If she hadn't pulled her chair forward to get warm i wouldn't be writing and you wouldn't be reading this.)

Our house had stables behind it consequently we had a lot of flies Dad and i had an on going game to see who could kill the most flies during the evening just before bedtime. That eventfull night there was one fly left alive, next day dad said that was very extreme measures to kill that last fly and wondered if it survived as well.

Thank fully the whole of our family survived the rest of the war.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.