大象传媒

This story is taken from an interview with Marjorie Brown [nee Carrol] at the Ballymena Servicemen鈥檚 Association, and has been added to the site with his / her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was David Reid, and the transcription was by Bruce Logan.
====

My unit was in Cooper green, Hemmel Hempstead. That鈥檚 Hartfordshire. And then we went up to courses in Richmond, Surrey, a Suburb of London
And that鈥檚 between the 2 places
Richmond is just end of the line, then end of the tube stations.
I had a cousin who lived there, and I used to go up weekends to see her. That was at the time of the buzz-bombs. I was in London at the time of the buzz-bombs, for I was up to see her.
To watch them coming across and see them coming down and all. In fact, one came down about 500 yds from where I was staying.

One of the German pilotless planes. That鈥檚 what they bombed London with at the end of the war. They were V1s. The V2 was the rocket, but I don鈥檛 think they got many rockets because our boys were starting to bomb Germany very heavily at that stage, and the rocket sites I think got bombed. But it鈥檚 a bigger job with the V1s because they had to congregate the AF. They had to congregate on the s coast, and just ack-ack. All the guns just kept firing, but some of them got through. It was very 鈥�

[one of the V1s hit]
That was down near Richmond. Petersham was the next village, the next wee bit round, but more or less contiguous. Just like Ballymena and Broughshane, you know? It was that near.
One of them came down one nite, but I slept through it. At the age of 21 you can sleep through anything. Put it like that. When I was stationed with the Johnsons, I mean, Mr Johnson was the warden, the Air Raid Warden for the area. He nearly hauled me out of bed, and I said 鈥淟et me lie, I鈥檓 not getting up!鈥� 鈥淥h no you鈥檙e not going to stay in this house when the rest of us are out!鈥�
During a raid. He made me go out to the air raid shelter. It was a dugout on the street. That served most of the street. But they were kind of Elderly people that hadn鈥檛 joined up or anything. That was mostly when the planes were going over. When the planes were going over, that was maybe prior to the V2s, and we used to start singing lots of songs and stuff so that they wouldn鈥檛 hear the noise overhead.
They were hand-made, they were really kind of semi-underground. They sort of went down a few steps. They were kind of dug-outs a wee bit. If you got hit it wouldn鈥檛 have saved you all that much. At least the shrapnel and things like that wouldn鈥檛 have 鈥� But we didn鈥檛 have anything all that close, except that one time. I wasn鈥檛 staying with them at that time. I was at another house. It was close by. Mrs Bilious, I think her name was. She says 鈥淭hat was a close one we had last night鈥�.
鈥淲hen? What time was it at?鈥�
鈥淒id you not get up?鈥�
鈥淚 didn鈥檛, I never heard anything!鈥�

Ah, but you see, you always had the feeling, 鈥渋t鈥檚 not going to be me鈥�.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.