大象传媒

I remember when I was only a child during the war, but my Father was a Warden and then later he joined the R.A.F. He became an armourer at a station just outside Hull. He used to make me model air-planes. Spitfires, Lincoln Bombers etc. He also used to make us fireworks for bonfire nights, using flares and thunder-flash鈥檚. I remember him having an accident with one thunder-flash.

I was three when the war started, there was a Barrage Balloon moored across the road, about 1941 or 1942 a Landmine was dropped and we had to move out of the house.

We lived in Hull at the time quite close to the docks, and whenever the German planes passed over Hull after bombing Leeds and Manchester, they dropped anything they had left on to us.

The new house that we moved to was also quite close to the Docks, for a period we slept every night in a shelter in a neighbours garden, and this went on for several months, sometimes we just went under the stairs, we did not have our own shelter.

I can remember the fires started by the incendiary bombs that they dropped. Every morning we could go around and discover whole groups of houses disappearing. Some only yards away.

As lads, the morning after a raid, we collected the shrapnel on the playing field around us.

This story was submitted to the 鈥淧eoples War Site by Rod Aldwinckle of the CSV Action Desk on behalf of Malcolm Dobbs and has been added to the site with HIS permission. The author fully understands the terms and conditions of the site.

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