大象传媒

Prior to the start of the war we had lived in Toronto Road, Tilbury but the house was uninhabitable after being struck by an aerial torpedo in early 1940. We then moved to Church Road where I spent many days sitting on the front window ledge watching troop trains going into Tilbury Docks. There were ocasional air raids and we took to the Anderson shelter in the back yard. I recall hearing the gunfire from across the channel at the time of Dunkirk and after that time the frequency of air raids increased with the oil installations at Thames Haven being a regular targets. My brother and I were evacuated for a short time to Norton near Malmesbury in Wiltshire but domestic conditions there more primitive that at home and our mother came and took us home. After that the raids got progressively heavier and our parents decided take us to stay with relatives in Poplar in East London. I recall my father helping our relatives to cover the Anderson shelter with earth and turf. About a week after that, in early September, London received its first intense bombing. I recall firee being started by the afternoon raid and by the end of the day the red in every directio. I saw a burnt out trolleybus being towed to the nearby depot. The raids continued into the night with bombs falling nearby and one came particularly close when the shelter seemed to be lifted out of th ground and all of the soil which we had placed on top came falling in. The next morning we made our way to Aldgate and from there by Green Line bus back to Tilbury. Shortly afterwards my younger brother and I were evacuated again; this time to Aylesbury where we stayed until May 1945

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