大象传媒

This story has been written onto the 大象传媒 People's War site by CSV Storygatherer Liz Norbury on behalf of John Dibb-Smith. They fully understand the terms and conditions of the site.

One summer evening in 1941, at about 8 o'clock, I was waiting for the bus to school in the centre of Melbourne, a small town in Derbyshire.
Everyone at the bus stop looked up into the sky as one solitary plane, flying very high, appeared. The grown-ups there were all agreeing that aircraft we were watching was not one of ours.
Suddenly we were all terrified by the screaming sound of falling bombs. Someone grabbed me by the collar, and I was bundled down into the cellar of the greengrocer's shop. The air raid siren sounded, but was soon followed by the "all clear".
A stick of seven bombs had straddled the town. Coming out of the shop, the first person I saw was Dad, wearing his tin hat with W for Warden printed on the front. Without saying a word, but with a look of relief on his face, he took me by the hand and walked me home.
Two bombs had fallen either side of our house. The windows were shattered, and the roof buckled. As Mum sat at the breakfast table, a piece of shrapnel severed a leg of her chair, and another piece removed the spout of the coffee pot. She was herself unhurt.
I was, at the time, beginning my enthusaism for growing vegetables. Dad had given me a small plot of land and a tiny shed in which to keep my tools. One of the bombs fell exactly where my toolshed stood. Needless to say, from that moment, there was no sign of either shed or tools ever again.
Nearby, a local character and a great friend to me, an old man, Ben Robey, a keen gardener himself, had several large greenhouses full of ripening tomatoes. They were flattened by the bomb and the whole of his crop lost. His language on that morning could not possibly be repeated!
Another bomb hit a tent where 11 soldiers were camping. They were all killed. Another in the lake by the church killed several fish, which were left floating on the surface.
Our home, of course, was uninhabitable, and we rented a bungalow in Aston-on-Trent. The might of the German Air Force was now turned on the Rolls Royce aeroengine factory in Derby. Decoy fires were lit in fields surrounding Aston village in an attempt to convince the enemy bombers that it was the factory that was burning beneath them.
As a family, we spent each night, when there was a raid, under the kitchen table surrounded by mattresses. We often wondered, then, if we would live through it all.
Dad worked each night in a factory in Derby, making spare parts for Spitfires. After a few hours sleep, he was able to keep the family business going. We were wood and farm seed merchants.
One of Mum's brothers was in the Army, and he returned home safely after the war. Dad had two cousins in the RAF. They were brothers, and both were killed in the same week, flying over Germany. Winston Churchill was told about this, and he ordered that their father be flown home from India immediately. Their mother was so shocked that her hair turned white - and she was mentally scarred for the rest of her life.
That was my war as I remember it. I was 16 when it came to an end.

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