大象传媒

Although I was only one year old when the war began, and still only six years old when it ended, I have so many memories of the war - sights, sounds, smells, and pictures in my head.

But perhaps the memories that stand out more than any other revolve around a morning following a particularly night of heavy raids. (We lived in Brampton Road, Bexleyheath, probably about half a mile from an anti-aircraft gun emplacement, and perhaps just ten miles from Woolwich Arsenal.)

My father was away on duty with the Woolwich Fire Brigade, and my grandmother was staying with my mother and me. Against my father's wishes, we had spent the night in the Morrison shelter belonging to our next-door neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. Swabey, although we had our own Anderson shelter in our garden. My father particularly did not want us to use the Morrison shelter because it was in one of the pair of semi-detached houses next to our own that had flat roofs, and my father felt there was an enormous risk of those roofs coming down in one lump and crushing the Morrison shelter flat.

But that particular night my mother felt especially nervous and didn't want us to be alone, so she decided that we should all go into next-door's shelter. I remember with four adults and me the only child, it was pretty hot and crowded inside, and so stuffy.

The following morning, we emerged from the shelter, left the neighbour's house,crossed over onto our own drive, and onto our front doorstep. There was the usual glass and rubble and shrapnel on the lawn, although my mother held me by the arm and wouldn't let me pick up any of the shrapnel that day. As we stood on the doorstep, my grandmother a little behind and to the left of my mother, and myself on the right of her, my mother was shaking and sobbing, and desperately searching through her handbag for the front door key, crying "I can't find it. I can't find the key."

I can still clearly hear my grandmother's voice saying "Pull yourself together Florrie - the door's gone!" - and indeed, the door was lying flat in the hallway, and all we had to do was to walk over it into the hall.

Then came the clearing up. The pantry door had blown open, and there were jars of home made jam and bottled fruits smashed and scattered around on the kitchen floor along with pots, pans and dishes, glass and dirt and dust.

My grandmother left my mother to clear up the kitchen whilst she took me into the living room, where she cleared the sofa of debris and sat me on it with some books, and strict instructions not to move.

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