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And so, the air raids continued until something strange happened. I well remember a conversation between two schoolmasters of mine. Mr. Davis and Mr Casby. It appears Mr. Caseby had been on the guns the night before and was telling Mr. Davis how many aircraft they had shot down. It turned out they were not shooting them down - they were coming down of their own accord. They were "Doodle-bugs" as we were to call them. They were flying bombs and when the engine stopped, they dropped straight out of the sky. They flew both day and night - a siren warning was of no use, I often sat on top of the shelter with a whistle during the day and blew it when I heard one coming. When the engine stopped, no matter what you were doing at the time you ran for cover.

The family took to sleeping in the shelter at night. There was little rest from the air raids. I saw the results of a Flying Bomb on the cottages in Bromley Road opposite what was then Perry's Farmhouse; this is no longer there. The results of the Flying Bomb on the back garden shelters in Bramborne Road - so many killed in their shelters and one so very near our own house.

It happened around 7.30am on a Saturday morning, We were in our shelter; dad was thought to be in the house when a Flying Bomb came down only a street away. I know that we kids fell off our bunks and landed on mum who was on the floor. Mum was shouting the dad was in the house. We pushed the shelter door open and dust and bits were falling everywhere. Mum was still thinking the worst had happened to dad, but it turned out that dad was across the fields and had in fact been further away from the bomb than we were. The surrounding houses and ours were badly damaged and the house hit by the bomb was completely destroyed.

A classmate of mine had been killed. Her name was Rosemary. Along with her family she had just returned from Chislehurst Caves where they used to shelter every night. They had just come home by tram and Rosemary had decided to run ahead in order to put the kettle on ready to make tea for the family, she had only just enetered the house when she was killed.

Our house was badly damaged, all the windows at the front of the house were broken, all the roof tiles at the front of the house were gone and there were large cracks in the walls. Later the house had to have large timber supports erected and the inside of the house was covered with plaster and soot. For the rest of the day all you could hear were people shoveling up tiles and broken glass.

Because of this incident Ken, now Beryl's husband was bombed out of his home for the second time, earlier he had been bombed out of Lewisham. "The flying Bomb" had fallen just a few houses from his. Ken and his family were unknown to us at the time.

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