大象传媒

As I sit watching my 2 year old granddaughter playing in the sunshine my thoughts go back 61 years. I see a 3 year old sitting in a high chair in hospital, scrubbing the table with a piece of apple and constantly calling out, "I want my Mummy and my dolly".
My first memory is a feeling of suffocation, blackness and fear. I was in my cot in my parents' bedroom in a basement flat in Portobello Road. The house was bombed in the night and the flats above collapsed onto ours. Rafters falling across my cot created a breathing space, even though the air was full of plaster dust. My mother spoke and told me not to worry; her first and last words that I remember. My father did not speak. My young brother was not crying.
The next day the London paper reported that our family were all missing and believed dead in a bombing raid on sector 6.
I remember hours later, men passing me along a tunnel. Brave rescuers had been hours digging for our family.
I went to hospital with a broken leg and burns. My parents and brother were identified by their dental records. Today they rest in Gunnersbury Cemetery.
My beloved dolly was found and brought to me in hospital, but my mother never came.
I pray that my granddaughter will never know the pain and loss that I suffered.

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