大象传媒

My Tenth Birthday, 1940

I became ten during one of the few air-raids on our comparatively safe Cotswold town. Night after night (or so it seemed to me) the sirens wailed and my parents made me get up and go down to the shelter which my father had made in the cellar of our home by portioning off one corner and reinforcing the roof with timber.

It was always a false alarm 鈥� the bombers were only passing overhead on the way to the industrial Midlands.

On this particular evening before my birthday I was taken to the cinema as a treat to see 鈥楾he Rose of Tralee鈥� and towards the end of the film the soundtrack was interrupted by anti-aircraft fire, but we ignored it and stayed until the end.

On the way home, it did not seem like an ordinary night and instead of going to bed (it was now after 10 o鈥檆lock) we, my parents, two women and a child, who were billeted with us, and I went straight to our cellar shelter.

The gunfire was loud and the one woman kept repeating 鈥淥h Lord, help us鈥� monotonously in a constant chant. I can remember studying her face in a detached way. It did not seem proper for a grown woman to let herself go like that.

After a while there was a loud banging on the knocker and an air-raid warden ordered us out, saying everyone had to leave their homes in our terraced street and go to the underground shelters provided in the grounds of what had been an orphanage but was now a centre for the distribution of gas masks.

As they all headed up the cellar steps I came out last and the coat I had had wrapped round me tangled round my legs. I was scared the others would not realise and go on without me and I shouted 鈥淲ait for me鈥�. It never occurred to me that the warden who was still at the foot of the steps would ensure no one was left behind.

The shelter was only a street away but, with a full moon on a crisp December night, it was as bright as day and I remember listening to the aircraft overhead, and probably through seeing a film of Chinese children being deliberately machine-gunned, was convinced that we would be shot before we ever arrived.

In spite of my childhood pessimism we did arrive safely, went down the steps and found a space on the seats and settled down. Although it was December I don鈥檛 remember feeling cold. We had old coats round our legs and I suppose the number of people down there generated warmth. I remember laughter and jokes, many of which made no sense to me, an earthy dank smell and a confidence that home was no more.

I brightened when I realised it was midnight, I was now ten years old and actually awake at the moment I reached that advanced age. Then I remembered the Christmas present I had bought for my mother and carefully hidden 鈥� it would be gone and if so there was no longer any reason to restrain my urge to tell her what it was.

鈥淥ur house won鈥檛 be there in the morning so I can tell you what your present was 鈥︹�︹�︹�� I could not finish because of the laughter from those who overheard.

The raid went on all night and it was light when we came up.

The street stood still. I don鈥檛 know whether my feeling was one of relief or anti-climax. A bomb had destroyed nearly all of a nearby street and most of the small shops in the nearby High Street. All this was a few hundred yards from the massive gas holders which had miraculously escaped. Even I realised that a bomb on one of those would have killed us all.

Our home stood, minus every window but the one in the kitchen, and doors hung sideways on the hinges, and it was bitterly cold. Shattered glass was everywhere and it is still a family joke that as my father was busily sweeping up, he turned round rather too quickly and the broom handle went straight through the sole surviving window in the house!

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