大象传媒

Told to Bruce Funnell by Sidney Wetherill who was thirteen at the time.

The Blitz started on December 12th night and went through to the 13th.

The sirens started 7pm I was the house with my twin brother, older sister and young infant brother. My parents had gone to the local cinema to see 'David Copperfield' and always had instructed us not to go in the shelter without them but to always wait and lay down flat in the entrance hall.

By the time my mum and dad got home the there where so many bombs dropping it was too dangerous to go up the garden to the Anderson shelter so we all laid down in the hall!

At 11pm a bomb dropped in next door's garden, blowing out both our front and back boors and all our windows. From then on all we could hear were screams and moans coming from next doors shelter in the garden where the bomb had dropped.

By now it was freeezing cold because we had no windows or doors, and my dad made the decision that in the next lull we would rush and get into the shelter. When we had all settled in my father and grandfather went to investigate the screams coming from the next door shelter.

They found in the shelter that out of five people only three had survived which they brought into our shelter, one was only eighteen months old and another one had his arm blown off and had lost an eye.

The raid finished at 4am and all the family went into the first house they found that had got windows in. Later on some relatives that lived in a pub put us up untill our house had been repaired.

I still say they were solid houses that even bombs couldn't destroy!

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