大象传媒

This was recounted one Christmas evening 1963 (possibly 1964) by my late mother, Ivy. On Saturday 7 September 1940 my mother took my two years-old brother, John, to visit a friend, Ann and her young son Peter, who lived somewhere near the London docks. (Whether my father, Sydney, was still a printer on the London newspapers or whether he had joined the RAF as a lorry driver by then I do not know. I was not born till 1945.)

The visit completed, my mother with John in her arms, was walking to the train station to return to Cheam in Surrey, when the air raid siren sounded and the German airplanes were heard and sighted. It was the night the docks were bombed. As the bombs fell and debris from the damaged buildings tumbled down, my mother was forced to run (or rather hobble in her high-heeled shoes!) in the middle of the road, still holding John, in order to escape injury. At last she saw an air raid warden shelter where she sought refuge only, unbelievably, to be turned away with the words, "This shelter is only for air raid wardens. Go back to where you have been visiting". (Shades of "Dad's Army" perhaps?)

My mother managed to hobble in her high heels back to her friend's house, again dodging the falling debris, where she, John, Ann and Peter spent the night under the stairs whilst the raid continued. In the morning she could not believe her eyes. Their house was standing but all around was desolation.

Contrariwise, when my present husband Robert (born 1941) was being wheeled home in his pushchair in Beckenham, Kent, the air raid siren sounded and his mother was offered sanctuary in an air raid warden shelter. As she had a thirteen years-old daughter at home, she refused, only to learn later that the shelter had received a direct hit with loss of all life.

In the later years of the war my mother was friendly with the mother of one of John's playmates who lived round the corner in Frederick Road, Cheam. This lady was pregnant with her second child so could not have been a blood donor, as was my mother. She told my mother she would never be a blood donor because "you never know when you might need your own blood". Very shortly afterwards her home, and others, was destroyed, maybe by a V1 or V2, I don't know, as no trace of them was ever found. They disappeared completely. This affected my mother deeply as she had been very fond of this lady and told me what a lovely person she had been. I, of course, never knew them and cannot now remember their names.

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