大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from CSV Solent on behalf of Patricia Walmsley and has been added to the site with her permission. Patricia Walmsley fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

In the early days of the war, when I was 10 years old. my parents did not have an air-raid shelter, but friends who lived a few roads away had a splendid one with bunks, electricity and food and drink supplies. They left Southampton each night for somewhere they felt safer but gave my parents the use of their shelter. I was home from school this particular weekend and on the Saturday night there was a landmine raid - you didn't hear them coming!

Next day the local Home Guard platoons were going to Romsey on a rifle shooting exercise and we were going along for the day. Early that morning loud-speaker vehicles came round stating that various roads (including our own) had to be evacuated and all windows and doors had to be propped open. Father and I walked round to our house, on the way gazing at a very large hole in the front garden of a house in the next road. The hole was in a gap of about ten feet between the fence and the house.

Having dealt with the doors and windows at home, we went back to the friends' house, again peering at the hole.

On our return, later in the day, we discovered that the mine hadn't exploded because the parachute was either damaged or failed to open, causing the mine to land at the wrong angle. They had disposed of it on a piece of waste ground a hundred yards away.

When we went to shut up our house, my mother was mortified to find the front door propped open with a china chamber-pot from the bedroom!

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