大象传媒

As told by Donald Wharf

I will always remember, as others will too, that Saturday afternoon when London, especially the East End of London, was 'blitzed' for the very first time. The date, I now know was September 7th - thanks to a helpful librarian. The siren blared out as I sat in the garden, lost in a world of my own, digging away at the sun-baked soil, making a trench for my soldiers. Right from the start it was clearly an air-raid and not just the usual affair, as dull and persistent booming sounds upstaged the shrill wail of the siren. I didn't, however, on this occasion, immediately run to take cover: I sat there transfixed by the grey puffs of smoke that were gathering, high in the sky, almost as if they were coming from nowhere - then they began to move closer. Somebody, probably old Mr Morris, yelled "Look, anti-aircraft fire".... that was when dad, then my mother appeared and whisked me away to the shelter.

Once we were in there we sat on the bunk beds, crouching in anticipation and listening, of course, to the noise from outside getting steadily louder and louder. Then they were obviously right overhead; our ears were bombarded with sounds - gunfire, the throbbing of enemy aircraft, but worse, the 'crunch' of their bombs. Reality seemed to have disappeared in a whirlpool of fear and excitement. Slowly though, after a massive explosion, it all simply faded away, and so, there we were in our Anderson shelter peering through cracks in the door, trying to see if our house was still there and listening for movement outside. What was no more than a lull in the storm, soon ended: it wasn't all over. More Dorniers came in another great wave: their bombs, again, crashing all round us, just like the first time but probably worse.... I silently wished it would end. It didn't however: the bombers kept coming, dozens and dozens it seemed, dropping their bombs more or less as they pleased - but it couldn't, I thought, last for ever.

The long single note of the siren's 'all clear' came, eerily, later that evening - not that my mother believed it at first, so we didn't rush out straight away; we stayed where we were for at least several minutes, just to make certain, for her sake. Then, a bit later than everyone else, we slowly climbed out of the shelter and stood there, like zombies, but very relieved at the sight of our house - still unscathed. Nothing, however, looked normal or clear: the daylight had turned strangely yellow and millions of black bits, like miniature tadpoles, were raining down out of the sky, settling on everything, even on me, so I ran to the back door for cover. When, having reached it, I half turned around to see if my parents were coming, I saw what was obviously causing it all - a sight I will never forget. The whole stretch of sky to the south of our garden glowed like a vast sea of fire. Smoke billowed up many hundreds of feet while sparks flew in every direction - not near to us though, I realised that, but it wasn't, I thought, far away. My mother and father had joined me by then so the three of us stayed there, just staring. "Is it the docks?" I asked in the end. My father looked down, and then nodded.

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