大象传媒

During the war my Mum remained at the childrens home opposite the graveyard in Egham Staines. There was no air raid shelter so there beds where put into the large dining room. On the first night raid they slept in the basement and wore her wellies all night as she suffered from cold feet. The following morning she couldn't get them off ! The first Christmas that they slept in the dining room her friend Rene Rickard (nee Giddings) and herself slept by the Christmas tree. King George the VI had given them the tree from Windsor Great Park. They had all had a gift from the commitee of the home. She had gone to the local school and was thirteen in the September of 1939 and she had one more year of school to go. She was always told to remember her very smelly gas mask for school as they had to practice wearing them every day. She hated that and found it very frightening. When the siren went they would go into the shelter with them and remained there and waited for the all clear to sound. She thought the noise of the siren was horrible. The cemetery opposite the childrens home was bombed overnight but it had all been cleared up by the following morning ! Once she was old enogh she went to a childrens home in Ashford Middlesex to care for children herself. They were woken one night by the sirens and the sounds of the German Bombers. They had to get up in the pitch black and somehow she had fallen against a cubicle wall and knocked herself out. Everyone else had gone to their nurseries and she panicked as she thought that she could no longer see the top of the stairs. When she realised that they where still there she went down them and walked along a long corridor, through the big dining room and then along another corridor and up another flight of stairs to get to the nursery. Even though it was very frightening they all had to work on to get the children to safety. Someone had told them that they where sticker bombs which where dropped in a line. Luckily no one was killed as the house beside the boiler room "Caught it". The family were luckier than the house as they all walked out and were taken to hospital. My Mum had had cuts around her ankles from the shattered glass but no other real injuries. After that bad experience the children slept in the shelters with my Mum and the other carers taking it in turns to sleep with them. The second close escape that she had was when she walking home one night. She could hear a doodle bug just over head and she dived for the nearest shelter. She had just got to the door when it fell in the town of Staines. As she reached the door her hair blew upwards and she thought it had all been blown off her head ! She was obviously very frightened and stayed in the shelter on her own for a while then raced back to her sleeping quarters as fast as she could. She is now a Mother to myself (Sally Rose) and my Brother (Philip John) and has been married to Harry Philip O'Connell for 55 years having met him through mutual friends who were in the land army with them just after the war had finished. Sadly our eldest sister Susan Mary died in 1968 from Cancer and is missed very much even after all this time. Mum has one Grandson called Jack Desmond Earl O'Connell who is now fourteen years old and we are all very glad that she survived to tell her tale. She is a very amazing lady who has gone through many harrowing experiences but still, to this day, is helping people with her charity work in her local town of Andover Hants despite being 77 years old. She is always cheerful and really lives up to the nickname 'Sunshine' that she was given in the childrens home due to her 'sunny' disposition. (This story is a continuation from a previous passage typed under the same header giving Louisa 'Mary' Woods background prior to the war.)

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