大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Stephan Butler at the Uckfield Community Learning Centre, a volunteer for 大象传媒 Southern Counties Radio on behalf of Sandra Hewitt and has been added to the site with her permission. Sandra fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

As I was about 2 or 3 at the time of the air raids, I only remember some of the wartime events myself. I鈥檇 like to tell you about 5 stories that I can remember.

My parents and I lived in a ground floor flat, in a converted Edwardian terrace house. There were two flats in the converted house. Mr and Mrs Crick lived in the flat upstairs. They were about the same age as my parents, being in their mid-30s.

My father and Mr Crick had reached an agreement that during air raids both families would use the cellar, as this was the safest place in the house.

I slept on a blue metal camp bed, and the adults slept in hammocks which were slung from bolts in the wall. They had made the hammocks themselves from sacking.

One evening we were settling-down for the night in the cellar. At one end was a pile of coal. For some reason, the manhole cover had not been replaced properly. I watched as a cat appeared at the top of the heap of coal, and picked its way carefully down the slope into the cellar. When the cat noticed the people in the cellar, it quickly turned-tail and fled.

On another occasion, we were woken by an air-raid warden, and told to get out of our house because it was not safe to stay there and go up to the Church Hall. I was sleeping in the Morrison Shelter that evening. I remember my parents left the room for a time to gather belonging to take with us. I remember being scared at having been left. When we arrived at the Hall, I was seated with the other children at a separate table. They fed us porridge which I hated.

Another day, I was standing at the front-door with my family. We heard the chugging sound of a Doodlebug and saw it pass overhead. We hoped and prayed that it would fly past, which thankfully it did.

One night I remember hearing explosions. I was scared and remember calling out. My mother came to comfort me; she reassured me that they were only fireworks. I don鈥檛 know what the celebration was, as it could not have been VE Day. Looking back it seems bizarre that they were letting fireworks off.

We sometimes went to stay with my grandparents in Lancing (Ernest and Eva Packham), as the south coast was considered to be safer. One day when we were travelling back home to London, my parents were told that there was an air-raid warning. They were given the choice of whether to go to the nearest shelter or return home. My father chose the latter. This proved to be the right decision as later we discovered that the shelter had been bombed, and we could have all been killed.

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