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 Robert Lewington and has been added to the site with his permission. He fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Bob lived in Landsdowne Drive near London Fields and was 11 years old at the start of the war. He was evacuated to Wales early on, but came back to Hackney just as the Blitz began.

When he heard the siren go off he knew there was going to be a raid and would go into the shelters in the grounds of the flats where he lived. Bob remembers that you could not hear a lot when you were in the shelter. One night he came out of the shelter and as he looked through a gap in the flats he could see a big light in the sky. The bombers had caught the City of London and gutted it:

鈥淚 remember we came out the shelter one night and as you looked through the flats, through the flat鈥檚 gates towards the City - a great big glow in the sky, it was when they caught the City alight.鈥�

When Bob was 14 and had left school, he got a job working for Horne Brothers, a tailor based in Edward Road. Bob鈥檚 job was to deliver packets and uniforms to various shops, he would travel across London by bus and on the Underground. Whilst travelling through the city he saw lots of bomb damage. Windows in shops had been blown out.

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}

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