大象传媒

This story was submitted by Robin a pupil from Cedars Upper School on behalf of Zena Hutchins and has been added to the site with her permission. Zena Hutchins fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was a child during the war.

My first memory of the war was when men came to our house to dig an air raid shelter in our back yard. I remember thinking 鈥淲hy are they digging it deeper than in the other gardens?鈥� I found out they were doing this because we lived very close to the Rolls Royce factory in Derby and it was a major target for bombers.

I would often go down to the factory and see new spitfire engines coming out of it.

Later on in the war I remember something terrible that happened at the factory. It was eight o鈥檆lock and the workers were changing shifts. The new and old workforce were arriving and leaving the factory down Nightingale Road, it was packed with workers, as usual at this time.

A German plane flying above had seemed to have gotten lost. But then it flew down over the long Nightingale Road and with its machine gun shot down every worker on it.

I later went down to the road. I saw fingers, other loose limbs, arms and legs. There were also bits of metal from the machine gun rounds lying everywhere.

I later saw my aunt coming up the road. She said she had heard that Nightingale Road had been destroyed and she was amazed to find me and my family weren鈥檛 hurt.

I heard later on that the plane that had killed the workers on Nightingale Road was shot down over Dover and never made it back to Germany to reveal details of the Rolls Royce factory.

I also remember when soldiers from the artillery came to Derby. I made friends with one of them who happened to be a cook. He didn鈥檛 have anywhere to wash his laundry at the time so my mum did it for him each week. In return he gave her a pound of lard and pound of butter for each wash!

At first the soldiers had no army accommodation and local people were asked to house them. My mum said we would have one. We only needed to give him a bed and for that Mum was paid 1 shilling a week.

I used to watch him cleaning his gun ready for various parades. Some of the other children and I would visit the parades. I would copy everything the sergeant said to his men. My friends would then act as the soldiers and I would march around shouting orders at them.

I can鈥檛 remember any bombs hitting derby or the Rolls Royce factory.

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