大象传媒

My mother in law was being asked by her great grandchildren about her younger days. I finally asked her to write down her memoirs and turned them into a book for the family. This is an extract:-

It was a lovely warm, sunny Sunday that the blitz started. Waves of German aircraft filled the skies as they came to bomb the docks and other points around London.

We all had to go into a brick shelter. There was me, my husband John and our two boys, John and David. David was the baby and was crying and seemed in pain and I felt there was something very wrong with him. A soldier was on guard at the entrance to the shelter. I asked him if he would let us take David to the doctor but he said that he couldn鈥檛 let us out until they had captured a German pilot who had baled out when his plane was shot down.

When we finally got him to the Doctor we were told to go to the hospital as quick as we could.

As we left the surgery, the siren went off again so we had to walk. We had only got round the corner when we heard the drone of bombers. We counted nine above us and, as we crouched down by a wall, we saw the bomb doors open and the bombs come down.

An ARP warden, Bill Fletcher who had lived all his 65 years in our road, saw us and when we told him what we were trying to do he managed to call an ambulance for us. At the hospital they operated immediately and we stayed there all night.

The sights we saw there we could hardly believe. The bombs had hit the Central Hall and it was full of people. There were many dead and injured. Soldiers were helping to bring them in.

It was early the next morning when the Doctor told us that David was out of danger and that we should go home. We had left young John in the shelter with Mum and Dad.

When we arrived home, we found that a land mine had fallen in the road in front of our house and failed to explode. A soldier was defusing it and we stayed to watch from behind where it had been roped off. Afterwards he gave me the parachute, which was made of pure silk.

All the residents of the road had been taken to the school until it was safe to return.

A policeman asked me if there was an old lady living in the house. I said it was my Gran and he told me that she had refused to leave until she鈥檇 done her hair.

Later, when John, who was a driver at the docks, arrived at work, he found that the lorry and its load of pork that he would have been driving, had been blown up. He鈥檇 had a lucky escape.

Every day I had to go to the hospital to feed David. Once, when I had young John with me so he could see his brother, we were blown into a farriers'. That same night a bomb dropped behind the hospital, hitting a police station and killing nine policemen. All the children were taken to a big house in Brockley. When I went there to see David he always cried for by this time he was on the mend. He was so cold that I went and fetched his pram and took him home. The following night, after all the children had been evacuated, a bomb dropped on the house and the caretaker was killed.

The were some laughable times too such as the night such as when a neighbour called Phoebe dipped a bucket into a large tank of water which was kept for fire watching only to find it had no bottom in it. The poor soul was soaked.

I wouldn鈥檛 let John and David be evacuated, as they were too young to let you know how they were being treated. Some were happy but many were not and were little more than slaves.

We finally had to go to my Mum鈥檚 to live as our house in Barnes Terrace was destroyed when a bomb hit the ARP Centre, which was at the back of us. Luckily we had gone down into the shelter that night, as it was a bad raid. When it was all over we went through the shell of the house and saw that the warden who I consider had saved David鈥檚 life,Bill Fletcher, had been killed along with 5 others.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.