大象传媒

One night in May 1941, Nottingham was very heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe.The Church of St.Christopher which stood opposite our house in Sneinton at number 22,Trent Road received several direct hits and was completely gutted by fire.
Earlier that night, my parents had been so fast asleep that at first they did not even hear the sound of the Air Raid sirens. They were woken by the sound of exploding bombs as they began to fall in the streets around us.We all managed to scramble down to the cellar (which had been re-inforced with steel pillars and a corrugated ceiling to act as a shelter) just minutes before the bombs hit the church. The blast was horrendous. It shook the house so violently that I thought the house would collapse and we would be buried alive.
Fortunately, each cellar had been provided with an escape hatch of rough bricks which my Dad immediately began to knock through with a hammer. We crawled through the hole in the dust and darkness into the neighbours' cellar, up through their house over the rubble and burning timbers and out onto the street. Glancing up at our house we saw the roof ablaze and all the doors and windows blown in. We climbed over more walls, rubble and debris until we reached my Grandmother's house in the next street, where we joined other Aunts and Uncles in the cellar until the 'All Clear' sounded.
Early the following morning, we went back to see the badly damaged house.It was only then that I realised how lucky I had been. The blast from one of the bombs had blown the heavy front door off and it had landed on my bed where I had been sleeping only minutes before. Most certainly I would have been badly injured or even killed as I slept.I was only ten years old at the time. We were never able to live there again.

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