大象传媒

In 1943, I was 16 and working in the Food Office in East Grinstead. On this particular Friday afternoon, my colleague and I were trying to finish work an hour early so we could go to the cinema. Unfortunately, my boss came back in the afternoon and announced that he needed us to do overtime (I think that the milk was being "zoned") and could we stay late that afternoon. I made the excuse that I needed to do my mothers shopping and we walked down to the Whitehall Cinema to meet our friends and explain that we had to go back to work. My work colleague then went off to do her own thing.

My four friends went into the cinema and I went to Walton's the Greengrocers to buy some plums. As I came out of the shop and crossed the road to Woolworths, the bombs fell without warning (I don't remember hearing an air-raid warning). I have a vague recollection of a man pushing me and throwing a cape over me as the windows of Woolworths blew out. I wasn't injured at all, but dazed and shocked - but still had the plums clutched to my chest!

I couldn't make my back to work because of the rubble, so I made my way to Cranston Road near my house, where I met Mrs Holmes, wife of the manager of Sainsbury's. Mrs Holmes was taking her husband's mac to him as it was pouring with rain. As I passed her, I said "I think you will need more than that for him." Mrs Holmes looked at the sky and said "He has his umbrella with him". As I walked on I realised that she hadn't heard the bombs and didn't know that Sainsbury's had received a direct hit. Luckily, I heard that he had survived and that he was instrumental in reopening Sainsbury's in the Church hall.

My friends in the cinema were killed, as was my friend Francis Curry who had been evacuated to East Grinstead with Clapham Common School. If it hadn't been for my boss, I would have been in the cinema too.

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