大象传媒

The firemen never noticed us

This story was contributed to the People's War site by a volunteer from Oxford on behalf of Mrs Heley and has been added to the site with her permission. Mrs Heley fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Living in the East part of London at the time in 1940, where both our parents lived, the air raids had been very bad, day and night, therefore it was home from work and into the air raid shelter. There my mother had a hot meal ready for us and there we stayed for the night. Wally, then my fianc茅 now my husband, worked in the shipyard, repairing and converting ships to troop carriers and to naval vessels in a reserved occupation.
At this particular time there was a lull in the raids and one evening we decided to make our way to the West End to see a show. It was probably one of Ivor Novello's. After the show had finished we walked to Marble Arch and crouched under it for a while because the bombing started again. Then we got on a bus and the driver decided to carry on, despite everything around us. To this day I do not know how we got through.
At our destination, with the raid still on, we continued to walk home because there were no trams going. Then the raid got so bad that when we came across a fire station we dashed inside. The firemen were so busy what with bells ringing all the time and the men running around, that they never noticed us. Nobody said: "what are you doing here?" They were simply not aware that we were there. We stayed quite a few hours inside the fire station, until the "all clear" sounded. Then we made our way home into our respective shelters for the night.
The next day was like many more: Londoners went about their work with much courage and comradeship.
One small memory but one that remained.

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