大象传媒

Portsmouth was a large naval base and a prime
Target for emery bombers and we suffered many raids.
Our instructions went out delivering telegrams was that on hearing the air raid sirens that all boys were to go to the nearest air raid shelter and remain until the all clear sounded .I am afraid that we didn鈥檛 always do that and it was rather exiting to be riding around during an air raid. Of course that gave us an opportunity to find the pieces of shrapnel, which was very collectable.

I was on a delivery to whale island, the naval gunnery school in Portsmouth one day when the siren sounded I went to the shelter with many sailors. During the raids one of the sailors went up a ladder to the ventilation duct and then called me to look out and I actually saw bombs fall on the area of saint Mary鈥檚 church.

Once when I was off duty, I was with a few friends were out during an air raid and when we heard the first bomb go off it was the first time that I was actually scared. We all ran in all directions, I must have suddenly realised the futility of that because I didn鈥檛 know were I was going and also, there wasn鈥檛 much sense of running anyway. So I just lay down on the pavement close to the hoarding. The bomb exploded at the end of the street.

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