大象传媒

We had French doors at the back of our house right opposite where the Anderson shelter was built. When the bomb dropped, the blast took off the door to the shelter, and all the glass, wood and rubble from the French doors and windows came straight into the shelter. My dad's bunk was on the floor to the left of the shelter door, whilst my mum's was to the right. My bunk was raised up at the back of the shelter and across the foot of their bunks right opposite the door. Consequently, most of the rubble landed on top of me. I remember my mum trying to get all the glass out of my hair, and looking for any injuries on my head. We all survived with no more than a few very minor cuts, but were filthy dirty from the dust and rubble, and just glad to be alive.
On the night the doodlebug dropped, my dad had been to see his mum and sisters who all lived in the same street in Harmondsworth. His sister Norah lived in a house at the end of the street. Because of its situation on the corner, it had a large triangular-shaped back garden right next to an alleyway for access. Norah and Ron, her husband, did their bit for the war effort by keeping pigs, chickens and ducks, as well as growing a lot of vegetables and fruit. They gave my dad six eggs to bring home. All our 'perishable' food was kept in a food safe, which was a wooden cabinet with a door covered with a kind of narrow-gauge mesh. The eggs were put on a plate on top of a bowl with dripping in. After the bomb dropped my mum went through our house to see if there was anything worth saving. A piece of shrapnel had gone through the bowl of dripping, and the plate of eggs had dropped onto it. Not even a crack in any of the eggs! With all the devastation around us, buildings destroyed, our house gutted, but those eggs remained intact! I've always thought this was quite remarkable.

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