大象传媒

I remember a few things about the war, when it first broke out, we were in the neighbours back yard listening to the old pie radio and the mums started to cry with the news. I was once crossing the silver thames bridge and people started screaming and shouting "doodlebug", I looked up and there it was hanging still in the air deciding which direction to fall in, a man grabbed me and threw me into a small hollowing on the side of the bridge, luckily the bomb fell into the thames! I had three brothers and three sisters, we were evacuated to South Harrow for 6 weeks until my mum said we were as likely to get bombed there as at home, so we came back to Canning town. We used to watch the planes fly over head for a mission and then mum with mum we would count them when they returned, they often didn't all come back, how sad. There was an Italian POW camp in the docklands, we used to go and chat to them, they were friendly, I remeber asking them if they wanted to go home and they said no, that they loved it here! My most vivid memory of the War was watching our soldiers march from the Docklands settlemnt to the Tidal Basin Tavern where they were picked up by boat and shipped off to Dunkirk. The mums gave out cigarettes and chocolate to their sons, it was very sad, we knew some wouldn't come home.

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