- Contributed by听
- mytamworthmemories
- People in story:听
- doreen baldock
- Location of story:听
- croydon
- Article ID:听
- A2290376
- Contributed on:听
- 12 February 2004
I was born in March 1940, in Croydon. To young for memories you say.No! I can clearly remember my father picking me up to carry me down 6 flights of stairs to get to the air raid shelter, when that horrible sound started. He used to slip and slide all the way down a flight of stairs with me in his arms.
Sleeping in this dark horrible place in the garden, The Air Raid Shelter.
Sunday mornings going to buy my sweets with my dad with a book,'the Ration Book' and as we walked home, clutching my few sweets, looking up at the sky and seeing these large funny shaped things in the sky,'Barrage Balloons'.
I remember the day in the garden and I saw my first 'Doogle Bug' and my mum saying' it's alright we are safe because we can still hear it'and we could see the flames coming out of the back. I fell over the clothes prop,striaght into the mud.
Then the day my mum had my baby sister and me at the bottom of the back steps leading down to the back gate, lying on top of us both,she was crying, and the there was this terrible noise from above, it was a German fighter, firing at everything and everyone. When I was older I learnt that on that day he flew along the main high street and our road.
The day when the grownups where crying in nan's frontroom, my young sailor cousin had been killed and lost at sea. Everyone was so sad.
Then it was over and we had our street party and the Lights were switched on in the shop windows my nan took me to see this, a sight of which I had never seen before in my life.
But the real horror of this war which I will never foreget and I tell my grandchildren about. Is the Pathe News Film showing the aftermath of the 'A' bombs. Total destruction and a lone soul walking along which used to a road.
I hope and pray that my Grandchildren never ever have the memories that I have.
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