大象传媒

This story was submitted to the Peole'sWar site by Teresa Parsons and has been added to the website on behalf of Lily Bonneywell with her permission and she fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

A lovely summer's day, the start of my annual weeks holiday from war work in August 1944. Doodlebugs were over all day. There was such fear on the sound of that awful fatal crunch when it klands on some other terrified street.
Our air raid shelter had become a home for giant spiders and as we all hated them we decided to stay indoors on this fateful night.
Our beloved step-father had died through an accident a few months earlier and my sister Kathleen was stationed at Watford at Napiers air craft factory working on Typhoon fighters. Our brother was serving in the armoured corp and had been made corporal. My brother in law Tom wanted to join the RAF but he was unable to get release from a reserved occupation so he was a home guard.
This fateful night we lost so many. 13 in all including my Aunt Alice and her three young children. pauline, a clever litle blonde girl aged 14. Dennis a nine year old who got into many scrapes and Colin just four months old. I heard my mother calling that a bomber was landing in the meadow. I tried to get to her bedroom window to see what she was talking about when the whole house rocked. There was no sound at first just this awful feeling of limbo and then all hell let loose. My mum was thrown through the roof and back into the rubble. The part of one bedromm had disappeared and i was standing on a few floorboards. I couldn't see for dust and rubble and had to grope around to find my mother. I culdn't see her but just felt the warm sticky blood on her and I was screaming the whole time. My mum said it was my screaming that made her claw herself free.
There was a convoy of soldiers passing and they helped dig us free. We were taken to the first aid post at Northfleet School and I saw my mother for the first time. Her head was almost severed from her neck and her hands had no skin left where she tried to claw her way out. She was rushed to Gravesend Hopsital and it was two days before I could see her again.

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