大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Simon Harris and has been added to the website on behalf of Frank Davis with his permission and they fully understand the site's terms and conditions.

I was seven years old when the war started and lived in West Drayton near Heathrow.

I remember one school day I played truant with a friend called John. We went to a toy shop where we played all afternoon before coming out to find there had been an air raid. We had been oblivious to the whole thing. Play was never interrupted by the war and in fact gave us some more opportunities. For example we found that gas masks made good goal posts when we wanted to play football. On other occasions we would go fishing. On one particular evening after we had fished, we encountered some ghostly figures on our way home. The ghostly mystery was explained by the fact that they were actually men who had just finished a shift at a local factory and were totally covered in aluminium dust.

Once a month I would go to Shepherds Bush to buy comics from a lady in a caravan. Having found the caravan shut a couple of times I found out that the lady had been killed in an air raid. It was of course tragic but I still felt disappointed that I could no longer get my copy of the Eagle.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.