大象传媒

When WWII started I was nearly two years old. My parents rented a flat above a shop in Bow, East London, and shared the premises with the owners of the shop who also lived there. My father was called up for service in the Royal Artillery and we dug in by building the regulation Anderson shelter in the back garden. My mother and I would share the shelter with our neighbours in the house.

At the time when the bombing started my mother fell out with our neighbours and they were not on speaking terms. My father had come home on leave before being posted abroad and an air raid sent everyone to their shelters. My parents were not going to share the Anderson Shelter with the neighbours and so we went to shelter in Bethnal Green Underground Station. Likewise our neighbours were not going to share the shelter with my parents and they went to another public shelter.

During the raid a stray bomb made a direct hit on the Anderson Shelter and my parents returned to find their home in ruins. They were distraught at the thought that their neighbours had been killed and likewise their neighbours were in a similar state of mind. When they discovered each other still alive all thought of their previous disagreement vanished as they hugged each other with relief.

My mother and I were then re-housed in Tooting before being evacuated to Ammanford in South Wales where I was sent to a Welsh-speaking school. I was soon speaking Welsh to my mother who could not understand me. She took me out of that school and found another that taught in English.

My mother got very homesick living in Wales and returned to her mother鈥檚 home in Clapton, North London. The house was near a railway line that was the occasional target for German bombers. After just a few days there a night raid occurred. I was asleep and my mother decided to stay with me rather than go to the cellar in the house for shelter. During the raid a bomb exploded beyond the rear garden of the house bringing the ceiling down in our bedroom. I slept through it all and awoke the next morning covered in plaster. My mother got up after the explosion and reached under the bed for her slippers. This was just as well as the floor was covered in glass fragments.

The rear of the house had French windows on to the garden and these were painted black to comply with black-out regulations. The windows had been shattered and the opposite wall was covered in black shards of glass. Had anyone been in the room at the time they would have been cut to pieces. The house had a heavy wooden front door that had been blown off its hinges by the blast and rested in the front garden of the house on the other side of the street. It was re-hung with no ill effects. My grandmother and aunt had taken refuge in the cellar and emerged unharmed.

We returned to Wales but soon my mother was feeling homesick again and back we went to Clapton. On this occasion a bomb landed in the street beyond ours at the front of the house, sending the heavy wooden front door straight down the hallway without touching the walls, through the door into the back room and through the black-painted French windows into the garden. It was again re-hung with no apparent ill effects and once again we all escaped injury by sheltering in the cellar.

My mother and I were packed off back to Wales with the message not to return until the war was over. However my mother was an obstinate woman and came back with me to live in Clapton with her mother in 1944.

We occasionally would have incendiary bombs landing in our street. These were small canisters about 6 inches long with fins at one end to stabilise them in flight and incendiary material inside that spewed out from the other end when the fuse blew. My aunt used to collect the empty incendiary cases, clean them up and paint them with flowers and leaves to be used as flower vases.

This was the era of the V1 rocket, the 鈥渄oodlebug鈥�, and I recall listening to them fly over, hoping that they passed us by. On one sunny morning a doodlebug approached and its engine cut out. We raced for the cellar and instead of sheltering against the wall as I should have done I lay on the bed and covered my face with the bedclothes. My mother was frozen to the spot as the whistle of the bomb became louder. It landed on the house diagonally opposite ours at the front killing the two occupants. Our cellar had a window that was blown inwards and I was cut by flying glass but not seriously hurt. The front door was once again blown off its hinges and made the usual journey down the hall not touching the walls, through the door into the backroom and out into the garden. It was again re-hung with no ill effects. The kitchen at the back of the house had a large dresser on which were perched the plates, saucers and the cups hanging on hooks. These remained in position with not one item out of place.

Thereafter we avoided further damage as the war drew to its close.

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