大象传媒

when the war started i was 8 yrs old - i was born in the Eastend of London but at the outbreak of war we moved to the outskirts of London thinking it would be safer but it wasn't. My schooling was done mainly in the school airaid shelter and I can remember during the war children viewed the war in a differnet manner from adults - it was an exciting time for us. - spying planes, following soldiers around, airbattles going on and bombs being dropped. We used to go out collecting fragmnts of bombs, looking for shell caps. we'd look for holes that had been made in the ground to dig up the treasure.
We were mainly in shelters as i said,when the bombing was bad - at the time when the doodle bugs started to come over, these were pilotless bombs and they had a very distinctive sound - boom,boom,boom - we watched them coming over, of course we kids were supposed to be in the shelters but we were out watching the bugs praying it would hit the school but it never happened. When i think back it was a dangerous situation.
i can remember one day going on the bus to school but the bus had to take a detour because a V2 rocket, they were deadly things because you couldn't here them descend so you only knew there was an attack of them when they exploded. this one had blown a whole in the raod on our bus route at ptters Bar anad the houses around were demolished for quite some distance.
Another memeory was of Queen Wilimena of the Netherlands - she lived three quarter of a mile away at South Mimes in a big house on the edge of the woods. Well somehow the germans found out where she was and they bombed the house. They managed to kill 9 people. My father was a policeman,and he went up to the house. Queen Wilimena was still in bed having a cup of tea - he spent some time chatting to her about the nights events.I can remember seeing her coming down to the village on her bicycle - i suppose thatw as something seeing a Queen on a bike.
Wartime was quite exciting for us children - I remember the home Guard - or LDV who at first had a band on their shelve with the letters LDV written there.and they used to carry broom sticks with firecrackers attached to the top. on Sunday mornings they would be on exercise - Id come out of the house amnd there'd be half a dozen blokes under the gooseberries with their broom sticks ready to pull the string if the enemy happened down the street - boom boom and you're dead!it was quite amusing

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