大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War web site by Karen Elmes at the Building Exploratory on behalf of Pam Saward and has been added to the site with her permission. She fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Pam was 6 when the war started and lived in Casimir Road in Hackney. Casimir Road is a very peculiar road alongside the park and they lived in a block of flats. Pam felt very lucky as her home was not bombed during the Blitz, especially as she lived close to lots of targets, including a railway line, gas works, electricity works and water works. Pam remembers bombs landing on many homes in the streets near her home (although she was pleased that the sweetshop on the corner did not get hit!):

鈥淵ou could walk right the way through to Lea Bridge Road through an alleyway of bombed houses.鈥�

Pam used to go into their Anderson Shelter during the bombing raids, although her鈥檚 was a little different to other people鈥檚:

鈥淢y father remembered the First World War and the shortages. So we had the Anderson shelter in the garden and my father got the coal man to deliver loads and loads of coal and banked it all up with coal, so we wouldn鈥檛 be short in the war. He didn鈥檛 realise that it would have been like living in an oven, if it had gone up we would have cooked!

The fields opposite Pam鈥檚 house were made into allotments and there was an underground shelter at Lea Bridge. She can remember the 鈥渁ck ack鈥� guns because they were so loud.

Pam was evacuated twice to Bishops Stortford and then to Blackpool. The first time she was evacuated the train passed over the Hackney marshes near her home:

鈥淚 remember the very first day I was evacuated to Bishops Stortford and you went over the marshes. I remember being on the train and seeing my mother on the marshes waving to us as we went over. And we thought we鈥檇 gone such a long way away.鈥�

This story was recorded by the Building Exploratory as part of a World War Two reminiscence project called Memory Blitz. To find out more please go to ^{About links}

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