大象传媒

I was a young lad of 9 years when the war started. I am now 74 years and I can honestly say that in all my life I have never experienced a more exciting time than those few years between 1939 and 1945.

My family situation at the start of the war found me part of a one parent family - Dad had been called up. I had two younger brothers, one aged 3 years and the youngest was 1 year old. Mum was in her late thirties and we lived at 11a (mum wouldn't have 13!) Dykelands Road Fulwell, Sunderland. My Gran lived in number 9 three doors away with my uncle Harold and Grandad Nevison. Grandpa was a grounds-man at Usworth Aerodrome and uncle Harold drove a lorry with corn and animal feed stuffs from Fulwell Mill. He was in big demand on the Home Front not only as a distributor of food and provisions but he also doubled as an ambulance driver. On the day of my story he had a brand new Morris Commercial parked outside gran's at number 7.

It was a Friday, we were having lunch, it was a pretty meagre affair using some of yesterday's leftovers warmed up and made into a kind of broth. Mum had a funny feeling, and come to think of it so did I. She said "I feel as if something is going to happen". If she had mentioned premonition I wouldn't have understood, or even took any notice, oblivious as I was, with my eyes glued on a comic stuck up against the sauce bottle. I was alway's getting wrong for that! Then it happened:

That lunchtime the sirens went at the same time as the modulating drone of a bomber was heard. In no time at all mum ushered us out of the house and into the Anderson Shelter at the bottom of our small back garden. The Ack-Ack (anti-aircraft guns)had already opened up as we crash-dived into the shelter. Mum drew the wooden door shut and we were plunged into darkness. No time to light the candle.

The sound of exploding shells rose to a crescendo and suddenly there was another sound that made us all cling to each other. A high pitched whistling sound which got louder and then I heard nothing. The exploding bomb deafened me with a pressure on my eardrums that I have never felt since. There was a rushing wind and the shelter door blew off. Stuff began to shower down outside, first the big stuff, broken bricks and tiles, then dust and soot.

Mum said it's over, thank God. We clung together for a long time and my ears put themselves right. "I heard the Warden shouting is everyone ok?"

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