大象传媒

I was in my late twenties during the war and had already had children, we used to live in Fulham in London and listen to the bombs dropping. We used to have an Anderson shelter which was a tin structure you buried in the ground which was meant to be our air raid shelter. However they weren鈥檛 very good and so we didn鈥檛 used to use those shelters, but instead built our own air raid shelter using our mattresses and a large dinner table. It turned out that our plan was a successful one because one night our entire street got hit by several bombs and destroyed, everybody was bombed out and many people died in their shelters but by the grace of god our construction stayed up and we where rescued. When we where bombed out I was lucky enough to be up and in clothes, but my children where in bed and so ended up with nothing to ware.

The next day we where told that we could go to a government office and get some money to help us through. When we got there, there was a long queue and people where coming out with one hundred pounds, however by the time we got to the end they only gave us twenty pounds. I talked to my friend about this and she said I should go back as she had received one hundred pounds and was in the same situation, so I did and ended up getting the full amount. However even this was hardly enough to help us through as we literally had nothing left after the bombing. I think that today people are given a lot more help by the government when they are in trouble then we where, even though when we were in trouble it was because of a war!

We where first moved to a small camping place run by the church, however my mother heard news of us being bombed out the next day through one of my fathers work mates and came up to London directly to bring me and my children back down to Sevenoaks where they lived, my husband also moved in with his mother in Twickenham because there wasn鈥檛 space for him at home. This all proved to be another peace of good luck as the very next night the place where we had been staying was also destroyed and everybody who had been there had been killed.

Soon after we got down to Sevenoaks I was given a council house, but this wasn鈥檛 really a solution to my problems as I was without any furniture to put in it so I had to go strait out to work in order to get enough money to give my children beds and things! I used to work in a fur factory making warm fur coats for people and I also used to make sailors uniforms at home for war work. This eventually meant I had enough money to set up my home once again and We moved back to London, but I didn鈥檛 like it anymore and so moved back to Sevenoaks were I have stayed ever since.

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